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Ambition loves company
From a distance, the five women sitting in the shade on a front lawn in Needham last summer could have been on a picnic. A couple reclined in lawn chairs, the others sat cross-legged on blankets or beach towels. But this was no picnic. While each woman had a cold drink at hand, there were no sandwiches, no potato chips, no coleslaw. These women had gathered for the difficult business of discovering what their next career steps should be. It was a career transition group in action. Meg Weed, founder of the group and an architect, had long been frustrated that her job with an architectural firm prevented her from pursuing her love of painting. In 1995, she had lucked into a spacious studio/apartment in the Fort Point Channel Artists' Community, a building set aside for artists in the heart of the Boston Harbor redevelopment area. But four years later, Meg still wasn't painting. She blamed the stress at work but recognized that work pressure was only part of the reason. She feared change, but she was also furious at her inability to move purposefully toward what she wanted. Meg had read the personal development books, consulted a career counselor. She had already switched jobs once in an effort to get more control over her time. None of it helped. Why was it proving so hard for her just to make the time for painting? Should she quit architecture altogether? Persuaded that she needed more perspective on her problems, in May 1999 Meg called up several women friends who shared her desire for change, and they formed a group. Like her, the other women were in or near their 40s. Like her, they were asking, "What next?" "I had some vague ideas about creative things I wanted to pursue but didn't know how to get to," says Louise, a group member who works as a customer service supervisor and dreams of studying dance. "The prospect of trying to actually do that sounded very intriguing and incredibly scary. When Meg talked about getting a group of people together, it seemed such a safer way to explore what I might do. The idea of not being alone sounded so wonderful." (Louise and another woman, Wendy, asked that their last names not be published.) Kathy Lavine loved her job as graphic designer in the public relations department of a multinational consulting and engineering firm. But she said yes to Meg's group because she wanted to expand her interests outside work. Then, a month after the career transition group formed, the funding for her position unexpectedly ran out. "Suddenly, I was the one in absolutely dire need of the support the group had to offer," says Kathy. Meg, who was also between jobs, gave Kathy moral support. "She urged me to use the transition time to explore other interests I'd had no time for before," says Kathy. "It made the transition a lot easier." Career transition groups are increasingly what women turn to as they confront an often daunting life experience - a career or job change. Some want greater responsibility and higher pay; others are ready to cut back at work to make time for music or weaving or children. For any woman who has ever said, "I always wanted to be a pilot" but doesn't dare sign up for lessons, for someone who hates her job but doesn't know what would suit her better, or for a mother scared to reenter the workplace, career transition groups offer a way to sort out feelings, get practical information, even rehearse a job interview or a sales pitch. Of course, there are other options. Women continue to consult career counselors, take career development classes, devour how-to books on finding the ideal career. They join organized groups run by a facilitator that focus on a particular career dilemma. But career counselors can offer only one person's insights, however well-informed. Classes can be more didactic than interactive. How-to books can't answer readers' particular questions. And organized groups, run by facilitators, can come to depend too much on the facilitator, leaving participants as bystanders. When women organize themselves into a group, say those who have tried it, they can uncover choices and tap into practical support that the other options may not provide. Career transition groups often attract women beyond the early stages of their careers, those who have mastered their craft and attained some standing in their professions, those who are asking "Is this all?" Members tend to be older than 30. The majority have older or grown children and are past the work-family balancing act. Some are looking for workplace fulfillment. Rebecca Rowley of Watertown quit a career in health care sales and marketing to direct a leadership program at Boston College. She couldn't have made the change, she says, without the women's career transition group she put together in 1993. The group met at Rowley's home in Cambridge at the time, but members came from all over - Watertown, Boston, Medford, Newton, Wellesley. Rowley says the women were asking: "What will be best for us as professional working women? How do we take the reins of our career and move forward?" "You know," says Rowley, a relaxed redhead in her early 50s, "there's an old boys' network, and what we wanted to do was to develop a women's group that was not the `good old women' but something more creative. We said the old boys' network is this political thing where you've got to be on the inside to get where you want to be," Rowley says. "We really wanted to develop a network that didn't play those kinds of games but at the same time could provide a strong network and help women out." The new blueprint does include networking in the traditional sense of using contacts to get jobs. But the groups are not just about making new contacts but about getting to know oneself better. Rowley's group met for less than a year, but it gave her a place to clarify her goals, to articulate that "I like to integrate creativity, responsibility, and ethics into the workplace." That discovery and the support of her group gave Rowley the strength to turn down job offers in her old field of health care and take a new position, for less money but more personal satisfaction, as director of an academic program. While there are no studies tracking the number of career transition groups for women, the anecdotal evidence for their growing popularity is compelling. Author Barbara Sher has been promoting the formation of what she calls "success teams" since the mid-1970s. She says she gets inquiries from across the country from women looking for a group to join. Her book Wishcraft provides a blueprint for organizing a success team. In recent years, she says, her business has taken off. Corporations engage her to speak to women employees, her books are selling in the millions, she gets dozens of e-mails a day, and her Web site (www.barbarasher.com) has attracted thousands of visitors. "Somebody estimated there are about 3 million people who know who I am and probably like me," Sher says by telephone from her home in New York City. "I'm not a household name. But that's an interesting chunk of people." Sher says she doesn't know why success teams are enjoying such a surge of interest, although the current economic prosperity contributes to women's willingness to leave jobs and try something new. But Sher does know why the teams work: because they're practical. The difference between success and failure, Sher says on her Web site, is "not your attitude, your mantra, or your toothpaste, just lots of ongoing help." While coed groups can be beneficial - Sher has facilitated hundreds of them - she feels women-only groups have their own special dynamic. When they work right, they are welcoming and nonjudgmental. Small groups, she says, "are totally natural for women. That's how they take care of everything. Not vast organizations where people wear two and three stripes to indicate their importance, but small groups." Groups can form in any number of ways. Doris Roach of Brookline found herself part of a women's group that spun off from a formal personal development course. Roach was an in-house counsel to a Fortune 500 corporation, but after more than 10 years, she had not found satisfaction in the practice of law. Despite her pride at making it as a woman of color in a historically white and male field, Roach wanted a career in which she could take advantage of her skills at relating to - rather than confronting - other people. The women's group, she says, "turned out to be the catalyst for me getting the courage to actually leave." She quit her legal position in June 1997 and now runs her own Boston-area business, Potential Horizons Realized. Roach is a "vision planning coach" who works with individuals and groups to help them grapple with issues similar to the ones she faced. In New York City, Joanne Cancro also turned to a small group of six women that emerged from a leadership workshop. Cancro was reexamining her choice of a career in sales and marketing. Although she was making more than $75,000 a year, her love was nutrition and health. But to pursue a career in those fields would mean going back to school, changing her lifestyle, probably leaving the glamour and pulse of New York. Her group, she recalls, "really made the difference. All ages, religions, sexual orientations, socioeconomic backgrounds. People gave each other feedback on what might work, on what they were hearing, so we could figure out what it was that we really wanted. When someone mentioned chiropractic, it really clicked for me." Today, Cancro runs her own chiropractic practice in Newton. Other groups form organically among friends who decide to address job issues together. Geraldine Brehm teaches managerial psychology at Boston University, has published catalogs for museums and for businesses, has extensive retail experience, and a background in public policy. But the question haunting her was: "What do I do next?" To help her decide, she assembled five friends from across the professions - a lawyer, an entrepreneur, a writer, a homemaker, and a psychologist - who were similarly examining options. "I did it because in talking to a number of people, they were all dealing with the same issues," says Brehm. "So I asked, `Do you want to talk to other people about this?' " The notion of women getting together is nothing new. Some of America's most noted political and social movements have had at their heart networks of women. As feminist historian Blanche Wiesen Cook put it in an 1977 essay: "Frequently the networks of love and support that enable politically and professionally active women to function independently and intensively consist largely of other women." Indeed, beginning in the 1830s, women's interest in social reform brought them together in a wide variety of philanthropic groups. From 1848, when the movement for women's suffrage had its official start at Seneca Falls, New York, women gathered to advance the cause. In the 1960s and early 1970s, consciousness-raising groups radicalized the thinking of many young women who went on to spearhead the feminist movement. But women's networks could also be social. In early America, quilting bees allowed women to combine a useful task with a chance to talk. Ladies' luncheons and members-only clubs have been consistent staples of the upper-class social scene. The 1950s featured kaffeeklatsches. Women college graduates of that era, not yet present in the workplace in great numbers, started social science clubs where members presented papers on political or historical topics. In the 1980s, isolated young mothers joined play groups for their children to find community. Even in the more career-driven '90s, women still found time to meet: in writers' groups, storytelling groups, investment groups, or book groups. Women looking for spiritual sustenance and guidance can turn to any number of church-based groups. So-called goddess groups celebrate the feminine. Career transition groups are yet another chapter in this evolving history. While hardly a new concept, as Sher can attest, their apparent growing popularity in recent years speaks to how fruitful they can be. Witness Brookline writer Susan Quinn and her success group (only a coincidental relation to Sher's success teams), which has been meeting continually since 1978. "What we really needed was a place where we could talk about our careers," says Quinn. The four group members (two of whom had been roommates at Oberlin College in Ohio) were in their mid-30s at the time. Besides Quinn, one was a clinical social worker, one a professor of art, and the third an aspiring psychologist. Three had young children. They began to meet for lunch every other week, always at cheap restaurants. "In the beginning," muses Quinn, "we were quite serious about calling it the success group. That's what it was all going to be about." The group found its stride early. Evelyn Davis, the social worker, had just taken a new job when the group started meeting. She hated the job, but as a diligent young woman was guilt-stricken at the thought of quitting so soon. Davis brought her dilemma to the group. Diana Korzenick, the art professor, listened thoughtfully, then asked: "Did you date much?" Her point, Korzenick remembers, was "Are you open to opportunities or so conscientious you can't switch gears easily?" Within days, Davis went looking for a new job and found one with a new business offering rehabilitation services that eventually grew to a $650 million company with 150 offices and Davis as senior vice president. "I would not have done it without the support of the group," she says. To judge by the members' accomplishments, the group has achieved its initial aim - success. The women have won writing awards, earned handsome salaries, traveled, and built thriving private practices. Along the way, they helped one another over the rough spots. Between meetings, help was concrete, timely, and quick. For example, one member would call another to check on the status of an important phone call, a difficult letter, a book chapter, or an interview. Davis remembers that when Kathryn Kirshner developed writer's block while trying to finish her thesis, the group helped her deal with her despondence. "We could hear her and listen to her, and then she could go with it," says Davis. Quinn, a biographer with a new book, Human Trials, due out in April, says: "This group has been so important in really making me feel entitled to a career and really helping me to think it through." Over the years, there is little the group has not weathered: divorce, death, serious illness, problems with children. All four remember the point at which it dawned on them that the success group was not just about work but, as Quinn puts it, "about our lives." One member's marriage was falling apart, and she told the group she'd have to leave because she just couldn't focus on her career. Instead of letting her go, the group decided to redefine itself and to redefine success. "We became very aware that to separate out work from life is artificial," says Davis. Career guru Barbara Sher couldn't agree more. "I think that women have a natural and unique ability to understand that everything is one thing in your life," she says. "Men compartmentalize either naturally or just because of the culture. . . . Women never had any reason to do that. They have begun to make it clear to the world that the quality of your life affects your work, the quality of your work affects your life. There is no dividing line." There are no hard and fast rules for how to run a career transition group, but two operating principles are essential - a willingness to listen to one another's dreams and fears and a commitment to help one another take the small steps that make big changes happen. Conversations with several groups from the Boston area turned up suggestions for how to organize: Some groups work through a particular career development book such as What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles, Transitions by William Bridges, or The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. Others hire a professional to administer a personality and interests test and use the results as a jumping-off point for discussion. If the group lacks a leader, conversation can drift away from career issues to boyfriend/husband complaints or the latest movie. Or meetings can turn into amateur therapy sessions for one needy individual rather than serving all equally. Occasionally groups never learn to listen to one another, and progress stalls. Rules, in the experience of Nancy Brook, a Medford career and work/life consultant, are indispensable for the success of self-starter groups. "I think you have to create rules," says Brook. "If you stick with [them], and you don't go off course, I think they work phenomenally well. The rules being: You have 20 minutes. How do you want to use this time? How do you want to use us?" While Brook sees distinct advantages to getting one-on-one advice (that is, after all, her business), she thinks groups have a power and energy of their own. "Sometimes you need to be able to hear other people tell you why what you're trying to do is important to you, because your moment of enthusiasm doesn't last," she says. "That's the great thing about groups. You need other people to remind you of that moment of clarity when you knew exactly what it was you wanted." In recent years, psychologists have begun to investigate just what it is about groups that is so appealing to women. The subject is a subset of a broader reexamination of women's psychological development and the ways in which women think and behave differently from men. In 1976, Jean Baker Miller, director of an institute named after her at the Wellesley College Centers for Women, published the groundbreaking book Toward a New Psychology of Women. Next came Harvard's Carol Gilligan, who wrote the influential book In a Different Voice in 1982. Their research and that of their colleagues has revolutionized the field of psychology. They found that women do not strive all their lives for separation and independence the way men are thought to do. Rather, they cherish connection and interpersonal interaction - in other words, groups. The core idea behind Miller's theory of female development, elaborates the institute's co-director, Dr. Judith Jordan, is that "women grow not on a trajectory from dependence to independence, through increasing mastery and self-sufficiency, but that we grow through a process of what we call growth-fostering relationships." These relationships, she says, "are very much about mutual growth, the desire to participate in the growth of others, not just in one's own growth, and mutual empathy." The ability to relate is more highly developed in women for historical reasons but should, Jordan hastens to add, become an acceptable part of the male repertoire as well in order to help all people take fullest advantage of their intellectual and emotional capabilities. The cost to women of being held to developmental standards that may be more appropriate for men has been high, says Jordan, not least of all in the workplace. "What's happened is, when that `psychology of human beings' is applied to women, they're seen as deficient, defective, second-class men. They're seen as too emotional, too needy, too dependent. They turn to other people too much; they don't use their own resources to settle problems." For women unhappy in the business world, she adds, this has meant special pain, for if a businesswoman decides she wants out, "no one says what's wrong with the system that all these women . . . are leaving? They say what's wrong with the women?" In fact, a 1998 study conducted jointly by Catalyst (a New York-based nonprofit research organization investigating women and business) and the National Foundation for Women Business Owners found that discontented businesswomen are leaving mid- to large-sized companies to start their own businesses at twice the rate of men. Jordan, who heads a training and research project dubbed Working Connections about women at work, has heard the stories for herself. She leads workshops on workplace-related topics that often attract women who are between jobs. "Women are saying the work culture was either hurting me or it wasn't allowing me to fulfill my vision or my passion," says Jordan. In her view, career transition groups are an effort by women to reconcile the competing messages of society and female nature, broadly speaking. "I'm not at all surprised that [career transition groups] are enormously useful and helpful and important," says Jordan, "and that women would spontaneously come together to validate, empathize, to share ideas, to overcome woundings from their past job experiences, to network, to collaborate." "It's very real and satisfying for women to turn to other people," concurs Jean Baker Miller. "It makes a lot of sense to me that women would do this when they come up against various things in their lives. I think even for women who never thought of themselves as feminists, the atmosphere since the women's movement has made it more permissible for women to do these things. It's sort of in the air." That observation feeds into a recent review of old research conclusions by a team at the University of California at Los Angeles. Their paper, published in the July issue of Psychological Review, reviews research data stretching back to 1932 that had concluded that humans respond to stress by fighting or fleeing. The authors discovered that all the test subjects were male. Their revised theory - which has yet to be rigorously tested - hypothesizes that, for females, the response to stress is quite different. "We suggest," they write, "that females respond to stress by nurturing offspring . . . and by befriending, namely affiliating with social groups to reduce risk." If their conjecture is borne out, it would go a long way toward explaining why career transition groups are uniquely useful to women as they chart their way to a full and satisfying work life. It's November, and Meg Weed's group is having another monthly meeting. They're doing just what Jordan and Miller were describing. They have not read any of the research. But they do have a common tool, Sher's Wishcraft. Some had read it before the group started; others dipped into it as needed. They were not going through the exercises in any systematic way. But they were guided by Sher's suggestions: Talk for 20 minutes each, offer feedback, listen carefully. On this rainy afternoon, three are meeting in Meg's lofty Fort Point Channel apartment, with its 8-foot-tall windows and her artwork on the walls. Louise, the would-be dancer, is home with bronchitis, but Kathy, the graphic designer, and Wendy - a mother of two struggling to balance work and parenting - are there. One sits in the corner of a comfortable sofa, another is curled up in a matching easy chair, and the third claims a leather armchair. The mood is businesslike. After 18 months of regular get-togethers, the women have decided to devote a meeting to discussing how far they have come and where the group should go from here. Meg, for one, is feeling that the group has helped her achieve what she set out to do, to start painting again. On the wall behind her hangs evidence of her success, the completed Trowbridge Street cityscape she had started in 1994. Meg finished the large oil painting just in time for the annual Fort Point Channel Artists' Community Open Studios day in late October. Meg was among the exhibitors - with some old work but also, significantly, several pieces that were new. Both Kathy and Louise had come to the exhibition to lend Meg moral support. Meg reminds the group that they had also helped her during the summer, when she was having a hard time getting motivated to seek a part-time job that would still allow her time for her painting. "I'm just scared," Meg had told them. "I'm scared of even taking the step of arranging the interviews. I seem to spend a lot of time thinking about it, but I find I don't actually do anything about it." "You just need to tell the employer what you want," Wendy had responded forcefully. "I know that's a hard thing for you to do, but asking for what you want is essential. Plus, in this economic climate, I think it's possible." Meg said the group helped her understand that, stressful as work can be, she did not want to abandon architecture altogether. What she needed was to carve out a regular time for her painting. The group, she says, "made me feel stronger about being able to state that I don't want to work full time, because I have other stuff to do that is important to me." In late August, that newfound clarity paid off. Meg did set up an interview with an architectural firm she respected. She summoned her courage and asked for a part-time position. The interview went well, but then . . . silence. Again, the group came to her assistance. As Meg's anxiety grew, she debated how best to extract an answer from the company and decided to compose an e-mail. Just then, Kathy - who knew from their group how nervous Meg was - stopped by. "I am anxious to move forward regarding employment," the e-mail concluded. Kathy leaned over Meg's shoulder. "That's the wrong word; it gives the wrong impression," she said, pointing. Meg changed "anxious" to "eager." "Yes," said Meg, "much better." Meg got the job with Tsoi/Kobus & Associates, an architectural firm in Harvard Square. She works four days a week. On the fifth day, with the encouragement of her new employer, she paints. Meg still meets regularly with her career transition group, though. Among other things, she wants to be there for the other women as they take steps toward their goals. Plus, even though her new job was a tremendous step forward, she can see that many small transitions still lie ahead as she translates her dream into a reality. "The group," she says, "reminds me of where I've been and where I'm going." |
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