Two years ago, when Lori McKee wasn’t invited to a company-sponsored conference for a group of minority employees on a management track, she decided to take action–instead of complaining about being excluded.
“I was left out because my ranking in the company wasn’t high enough, so I and a group of six other African-American women realized we had to do something to empower ourselves,” said McKee, an implementation project manager for information technology at Chubb Group of Insurance Cos.
Chubb is a global insurance company based in Warren, N.J. It has 12,000 employees in 130 offices in 29 countries.
And what McKee did was this:
That same year, she founded the Women of Color Leadership Book Club. It now has 17 members from company divisions across the country who “meet” once a month through a one-hour telephone conference call at lunchtime. Membership now is open to all minority women in the firm.
Although I have never asked Oprah Winfrey why she started a book club, I did indeed ask McKee that question.
“A book club can help you learn whatever skills you want–and you get insights and support from the other members,” said McKee. “Being a member also brings you to the attention of the company as someone who wants to move ahead.”
The project manager’s first step in organizing the club was to ask for help from Patricia Jackson Hall, vice president of operations services at Chubb and a member of its minority development council–and McKee’s personal mentor.
Hall became the club’s sponsor. The executive, who started as a file clerk at Chubb in 1971 and moved up to her present post in 1997, says the idea interested her because “diversity is my passion. I believe in the culture of inclusion.”
With Hall’s support, the minority development council approved the project and the club was official.
“There’s a group of talented women in this organization, they’re in the pipeline and we need to develop them to take on higher level jobs,” said Hall. “I know this sounds like a pun, but a book club is a pretty novel way, but an effective way, of taking control of your career. And we want to see more women of color in positions of power.”
The executive says her own path to advancement was helped by “unofficial mentoring over the years. People recognized I had potential and were willing to help me.”
That support led Hall, who is married to Stacey Hall, to take “one of my most important steps. In 1987 I accepted a line job in Atlanta, which involved a transfer from headquarters. But by then, our two children were out of high school.”
The move led to her current post.
“If I had had a group like the book club, it would have helped me identify different skills I needed much earlier. And most of all, I would have learned from other women’s experiences,” she said.
Now women at Chubb have each other.
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Here’s how the book club works: Each month, a member, called a facilitator, selects a non-fiction book with a leadership theme. She sends out questions about the book on the company’s database. Then the real discussion of it is held on a conference call, arranged by Monica Elliott, a systems implementer.
Books read so far include “Who Moved My Cheese,” “Soul Food: 52 Principles for Black Entrepreneurial Success” and “Tempered Radicals: How People Use Difference to Inspire Change at Work.”
“Members are getting heard,” said McKee. And the process of exchanging ideas, experiences and expertise is working.
One member, a department manager, was appointed to assistant vice president. And McKee herself–much more of a risk taker now than she was before she had the insights she’s gleaned from the book club–has been named to work on the upgrade of a global financial system.
“My biggest project yet,” she said.
I’ve always said it: Networks work–and so do book clubs.
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Hear Carol Kleiman on WBBM Newsradio 780 at 6:21 p.m. and 10:22 p.m. Mondays and at 11:20 a.m. Saturdays. Watch her “Career Coach” segments on CLTV.