Women Helping Women Is Good Business - Here's How To Make It Work For You

I was inspired when I saw comments from people like Kate Katz, the owner at All Hands Workshop, who said: "As a new entrepreneur bringing something new to the table in soft skills development, having a strong female support network has been essential. Supporting other women is as essential to me as air and water... it's a reciprocal relationship (stronger in some than others) that has nurtured me and help me to manifest some of my biggest ideas."

But then, as it so often does, something happened that made me think that we could be doing more to support and uplift each other as women. In this case, it was the Forbes 100 Most Innovative Leaders list, which only included one woman. Despite the admission from Forbes itself that there was a lack of female representation on the list, which they attributed to simple mathematics, it stung, and not just for me. The article was widely discussed and criticized as yet another example of how the boys' club of (mostly) old white men still hasn't been dismantled. I could point to plenty of female entrepreneurs who are innovating and leading every day, and somehow, they're still not getting recognized. It's not ALL bad news: Inc. just made history by putting a visibly pregnant Audrey Gelman, CEO of The Wing, on the cover of its 100 Female Founders issue. That's a step in the right direction.

All of this got me thinking: I do believe that women supporting each other in business is at an all-time high, but given the publication of the Forbes list, it's clear that we could be doing more and with Women's Small Business Month coming up, why not now?. Research from Ellevate Network shows the same concern: in a recent poll, 55% of women still thought we need to increase our efforts to support each other. Plus, 29% of respondents said that there could be more collaboration vs. competing between women, and 27% thought that we could all be networking and making more formal recommendations.

I do as much as I can to support and promote other women, but between being an executive who travels for my job, juggling two young boys, trying to keep up a healthy marriage and being a supportive friend, there isn't always a ton of time to reflect on what I could be doing more of. I was looking for inspiration, so I reached out to leaders across different industries to get their advice on both the personal and the corporate level. Here's what they had to say.

Fi Bendall, CEO of The Female Social Network, thinks that we need to reframe competition. "I take very seriously the inclusion of my team whatever their age. Unfortunately, I have seen some corporate women...feel they have to protect their position, mainly from male colleagues, forcing them to almost act like them. It leads to loneliness and isolation. We aren't male so we don't need to act like alpha males. Women together are so powerful, men and women together are even more powerful, and we need to get to that place in society and in our business culture. Competition has its place, bitchiness doesn't."

We try to do it all, but Jennifer Justice, Co-Founder of The Justice Dept, thinks we should celebrate what makes us special. " We are all great at something, and should be hired for that...At work, we feel like we need to do it all-be the boss, accountant, lawyer, business development, HR, everything. That is not how you scale a business. Women need to hire those specialists for the areas that they are not skilled at and give those roles to women. It supports the ecosystem," she says.

As the Vice President, Innovation, Global Health and Policy Communication at Johnson & Johnson and founder of media platform for Southeast Asian women, Seema Kumar thinks we need an open-door policy. "We need to notice if women do not have a seat at the table and do something about it. Also, senior women leaders should have an open-door policy, so others can come and talk about concerns and issues with their department and vertical heads, not just their human resources heads. Only when those who need to share their voices know they will be heard and follow-on actions taken, without repercussions professionally or personally, will we start to see positive changes."

I agree with Mara LeCocq, Brand & Community Director at Fishbowl, who thinks that we have to try to understand each other better."We all have different experiences that drive our behaviors. If I see a woman who has competitive, 'backstabby' vibes, I try to befriend her...Insecurity always hides behind competitive behavior," she says. "I support her in public and in private. Telling their boss in front of everyone in a meeting that she's awesome is something we all appreciate and need, when we deserve it. Also, it helps put her guard down, and ultimately helps the whole team. The competitive woman also needs validation."

You can succeed while bringing others along for the ride, Laura Mignott, CEO of DFlash, says."Be human, be helpful and be authentic. I've built my career by lifting as I climb and paying it forward. There is no greater thing you can do than to give to others. No one needs to spend every waking minute, but you can by being a good person, following up and being nice."

This is my own personal mantra. Meaningful connections are essential for us to build stronger networks; it's why I created the Connect4Women initiative this past spring, with the goal of connecting four women every day for a month. It's not only something that I think is important, it's also something that I just enjoy doing. Madeline Albright once said that "there's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women." If we can each find a way to support each other in a way that also brings us joy, that's a win-win.