ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Kelly Miller of Regent Apparel in San Francisco is part of the fourth generation of family leadership in the uniform and napery rental business.
Miller is vice president of business development, and she and her two sisters represent the first generation of female leadership in the company. She quickly learned that female leaders in textile services aren’t common to find.
“It was pretty early on that I realized, going to different events, that I was one of the few women at these events,” she says.
The Textile Rental Services Association (TRSA) formed the Women in Textile Services Committee to get more women in industry leadership positions, and Miller is part of that committee.
Miller and Camille Peters, president and CEO, Mobile Computing Corp. in Mississauga, Ontario, discussed this subject and what textile businesses, and women, can do about it during a TRSA webinar called Encouraging Women to Thrive in the Textile Services Industry.
STEPS FOR WOMEN TO TAKE
Women can take steps to be recognized for their different skill sets and what they can bring to the leadership team of a textile services company. But what’s an effective strategy?
“Should women act like men, or should you be yourself?” asks Peters. “Some think women can’t succeed because they don’t act like men. So, women take courses to be more assertive; dress for success in committee meetings in a dark, crisp suit; adopt the command-and-control approach. Unfortunately, this sometimes brands women as being too tough, unfeminine and aggressive.”
The lesson, she says, is that women need to be who they are and create their own persona and leadership style, one that works for each individual. Peters suggests that women need to create skill lists, both from professional and personal experiences.
“What have you done and what can you do now because of your personal experiences?” she says. “There’s value in updating your résumé. In an interview or in a meeting, relate past accomplishments to the work at hand.”
Peters suggests documenting all accomplishments, in a journal, on a spreadsheet, even on LinkedIn.
Besides documenting skills and accomplishments, one of the most important ways that both men and women impact their careers, says Miller, is by cultivating their personal brand.
“This is a great way to frame your thinking about your professional trajectory,” she says. “What is a personal brand? The practice of people marketing themselves and career as brand. Self-packaging. It’s a way to communicate your values, your skills and your personality.”
Personal branding is much different than self-promotion, according to Miller, which is often frowned upon. Personal branding represents the value a person is constantly able to deliver.
Miller says that in today’s business environment, personal branding is a leadership requirement. It’s important for men and women to take charge and consciously manage and command what a personal brand says about you. She says it’s a full-time commitment to define yourself. With proper strategies, it can be part of everyday life.
“With social media platforms, the question is no longer if you have a personal brand, but if you choose to guide and cultivate the brand or let it be defined on your behalf,” says Miller.
She offers four steps for women to define their personal brand:
- Know yourself.
- Know your objective.
- Know your target.
- Know your platform for reaching your target.
Another area where women can make advances toward leadership is by working on networking skills.
“A recent McKinsey and Co. study, covering 300,000 employees across 118 companies, found that a woman’s odds of advancement are 15% lower than a man’s,” Miller reveals. “One of the major reasons that this study cites as the cause of this is that women have a different network than men.”
Many women struggle with this, she says. While constantly hearing how important networking is, many do not participate in the traditional networking practices. Broadly speaking, according to Miller, many women shy away from networking opportunities, especially in a male-dominated environment, like the textile rental industry.
And women face a time challenge for these events, she says. They don’t want to take time away from personal life, so networking typically goes on the back burner.
“Here is where we can learn from our male peers,” Miller says. “Oftentimes, the strongest networks are the ones with many loose connections both within and outside of the industry. Broadly speaking, it’s more common for women to focus on a smaller number of deeper relationships, similar to personal ones. Men meet a lot of different types of people.”
Research shows that in a women’s network, they all know one another, she says, while men’s networks have a wide range of diverse people, and many do not know one another. In this way, men are able to connect other people and make themselves more valuable.
“Men are more comfortable going up to talk to complete strangers that they want to be meeting,” Miller says. “Women are much more likely to gravitate toward the people they already know because they want to catch up with them, and they’re more comfortable.”
However, she says that with constant practice, women can enhance their networking skills and expand their networks.
“These things do not happen in a day or week or maybe even in a year,” says Peters. “I worked many years at many different things before I became an owner and CEO of a business.”
She says that each promotion was gained through hard, focused work. At each move, she was able to create a value for the business great enough that her supervisor or other senior managers recognized her contribution. Look around to where there are problems at work that need to be solved and dig in, she says.
“Women have different, but critical skills. Leverage them,” Peters says. “The key advantages for businesses are to offer competitive customer service viewpoints, offer thoughts on operational approach and general management of people.”
Miss Part 1 on the benefits of gender diversity and what textile services companies can do? Click here to read it.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].