This article is by Mimi Spangler, a partner at Harding & Company.  Some of the material in this posting appears in  the second edition of Ford Harding’s book, Rain Making, which will be published in February and contains about 40 percent new content. 

This is the fifth in a series of eight blog posts on networking for women. These entries originally appeared as an article in Management Consulting News.

5. Recognize the Female Advantage

A majority of the women interviewed referred to their industries as still male-dominated, and noticeably so at the senior levels. A director of a national consulting firm described her first CEO conference. “I was the only woman in our firm’s leadership group and we went to a CEO conference where everyone was an old, white guy. First I was uncomfortable thinking about how I would fit in, but it became easy because I was different, being the only woman. I didn’t try to blend in; I took advantage of this recognition in the group and just met lots of people.”

Similarly, a leading rainmaker of another consulting firm described her participation in an industry group. “Women were rare there. I stuck out like a sore thumb and people remembered me.”

While uniqueness was sometimes viewed as a positive attribute in male-dominated venues, the ease with which women relate to other women was recognized by almost all of the women interviewed. “Women in leadership roles connect to other women in leadership, largely because there are so few of us,” commented one rainmaker.

One woman rainmaker in her 50’s said, “I recoiled from attaching to women’s groups early in my career because I did not want to segregate myself from the men. Now I feel that there is a broader group of women established and thought of in the industry and there is a real reason for networking versus the thought that the group is a women’s movement.”
Several also said that it was easy to break the ice and form natural bonds with women prospects or clients by discussing common personal topics such as children and related professional work challenges.
 

Mimi Spangler is a partner at Harding & Company, which helps professionals learn to develop business. She has worked with consultants at many firms, both large and small. For more information, visit the company’s web site at http://www.hardingco.com/ and blog at www.hardingco.com/blog. Spangler can be reached at mspangler@hardingco.com.

Read these two versions of the same anecdote told by a litigation support consultant:

Version #1

Sometimes losing is almost as good as winning.  Not long ago, a major power company was sued for breach of a twenty-year power contract.  The plaintiffs were asking for damages in excess of one billion dollars, the value of the damages hinging on the discount rate used in their calculation. 

Multiple experts offered the defendant ways to calculate the rate.  We spent many hours educating the general counsel on the credibility of the alternative ways to calculate a discount rate and persuaded him of the intellectual superiority of our approach.  When the arbitrators compared our estimation of the discount rate with the one provided by the plaintiff’s expert, they found ours more credible.  The power company ended up paying the plaintiff only $115 million, far less than they would have had to pay if the plaintiffs had won or one of the other experts’ calculations of the discount rate had been presented.

Version #2

Sometimes losing is almost as good as winning.  Not long ago, a major power company was sued for breach of a twenty-year power contract.  The plaintiffs were asking for damages in excess of one billion dollars, the value of the damages hinging on the discount rate used in their calculation. 

The attorney representing the company asked several experts to calculate the rate.  He spent many hours with the power company’s general counsel evaluating the credibility of the alternative ways to calculate a rate, and selected our experts’ approach.  When he took the case before arbitrators, they found his arguments both intellectually superior and more compellingly presented than those provided by the plaintiff’s attorney.  The power company ended up paying the plaintiff only $115 million, far less than they would have had to pay if the plaintiffs had won or one of the other experts’ calculations of the discount rate had been presented.

These are both accurate descriptions of what occurred, but the points of view differ dramatically.  In Version #1 the consultant is the hero and the plaintiff’s attorney isn’t even mentioned.  In Version #2 the defendant’s attorney is the hero and the consultant a helpful sidekick.

Is one version better than the other?  Why?  Might one version be preferable in some circumstances and the second in others?  What circumstances might they be?
If you were an attorney listening to the story, which version would you find most interesting and compelling?  Why?

If you used this anecdote describing your services to an attorney considering using you on another case, what different messages might the two versions send to him?

An anecdote is a simplification of a complex bit of history.  How you choose to simplify sends a strong message to the listener.  You should choose your words carefully.  It is especially important that you choose your hero for the story with the listener in mind.

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For more on this topic, please see the new edition of my book, Rain Making: Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field. This is a new edition of my earlier, bestselling book, with about 49-percent new content.