You’re the CEO of Your Own Career

Here’s How to Accelerate your Career with a Personal Board of Directors

I Bet You Can’t Solve this Riddle

Last week, my grandmother told me a riddle from her childhood: A boy and his dad are playing baseball. The boy gets injured and breaks his leg, so the dad takes the boy to the hospital and waits in the waiting room during the surgery. The surgeon looks at the patient and says, “I cannot operate on this child; he is my son.”

At that point, everyone would scratch their heads, thinking, How could this be possible if the dad is in the waiting room? After minutes of bewilderment the punchline is told: “The surgeon is the boy’s mother.” (Actually, today there’d be two answers to my grandmother’s riddle: “The surgeon is the boy’s mother” or “The surgeon is the boy’s other dad.”)

This is a photo of my paternal grandmother, Dr. Lucille Munion Rubin. Both of my grandmothers — a psychiatrist and an ophthalmologist — were extraordinary for their generation; women going to medical school at that time was unheard of.

You may not even understand why that joke was considered funny. I didn’t.

When my grandmother was growing up, it was so unthinkable that a woman could be a surgeon that the concept became the punchline of a riddle. It shows significant progress that in 2018 the joke doesn’t even land. But while women certainly have more opportunities now, we still have a long way to go for true equality.

When it comes to your career, your future is in your hands. If you are like me — disappointed with the slow pace of improvements in female representation in corporate leadership positions — think about taking ownership of your career. While it’s useful to develop a network of professional contacts, cultivating a strong inner circle of individuals is even more beneficial. This group of mentors, your personal board of directors, will be an invaluable asset to your career.

Think about it this way: Companies, large and small, often have a board of directors to guide them through important transitions and decisions. Shouldn’t you have one?

Not sure where to start? Read on, and I’ll tell you how.

Is The Gender-Gap Really History?

Why are the leaders of the world’s most successful companies overwhelmingly male? In the past, this discrepancy was often attributed to a higher percentage of males pursuing advanced degrees. Yet today, even as “the percentage of females in medical school, law school, and business school equals or exceeds the percentage of males, a significant leadership gap persists.”

Photo by Emma Matthews on Unsplash

While some progress has been made, the management and boards of the most highly compensated and highly respected fields are still overwhelmingly male-dominated. Just look at the percentage of CEOs and other executives who are female. Only 24 of all Fortune 500 CEOs in 2018 are female — not even 5%. Twelve Fortune 500 companies lack a single female board-member.

Become Your Own CEO

Like a traditional board of directors, your personal board will provide feedback and insight on important opportunities and challenges. Here’s my suggestion: Enlist five to six individuals who you can trust will be invested in your professional development. The people you choose should have unique strengths which will enable them to bring different approaches to advising you.

Consider including at least one of each of these four types of people in your personal board of directors:

• The industry role model: someone in your industry who is in a position you aspire to have someday. This person will be able to provide a “big picture” perspective on your career.
• The critic: someone who will give you raw, constructive criticism. Critics are the toughest people to approach, but they can have the most valuable impact on your development.
• The networker extraordinaire: someone who will help you expand your network.
• The mentor: someone who supports you unwaveringly and will encourage you to invest in yourself. You can count on this person to provide wisdom and guidance that will help you navigate challenging situations.

I’m lucky enough to have Miriam Warren, Vice President of Engagement, Diversity and Belonging at Yelp, as the chair of my personal board of directors. I’ve admired Miriam ever since I started my career at Yelp in 2014, and I immediately pinpointed her as someone I needed to get to know. Miriam introduced me to the concept of a board of directors by explaining that inspiration can come from anywhere, you just need to be open to it.

“Anyone could be your mentor, and you could be anyone’s mentor. If people were to broaden how they think about mentorship, or who can advise you — if you thought that everyone you knew in your life had some applicable information, how would you conduct yourself differently?” — Miriam Warren

No matter whether you’re still in high school, or whether you have been in the workforce for 30+ years; no matter whether you’re a sales associate at Nordstrom or the VP of Marketing at Dior; no matter whether you are the CEO of a company, or a CEO of your home and family; no matter whether you identify as a male, female or neither — I challenge you to think about the people who have been influential in your career.

Who will you add to your board of directors?