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Purpose -While the number of women in managerial positions has been increasing, the gender composition of top management teams is skewed. There are barriers and obstacles in place that limit the movement of women into leadership roles. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between modesty and access to leadership. Specifically, tendencies toward modesty and lack of self-promotion are hypothesized to perpetuate the lack of female involvement in top management positions.Design/methodology/approach -The literature on modesty and self-promotion is reviewed. The findings are discussed in terms of the persistent challenges faced by women with regard to their ability to enter senior levels of management.Findings -The overall message of the paper is that behaviours that are successful for males in the workplace are not successful for females. The good news is that women do not need to adopt male ways of being in order to succeed. A limitation is that the paper is largely "uni-cultural", as the research referenced is primarily that undertaken in a North American context. Self-promotion and modesty may be conceptualized differently in other contexts.Originality/value -The paper is one of the first to focus on modesty, an important gendered individual difference, to explain persistent workplace inequalities.

This study examines the effectiveness of the feedforward interview for improving the job performance of employees relative to a traditional performance appraisal interview in a business equipment fi rm. Managers (n = 25) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. Employees (n = 70) who engaged in a feedforward interview with their manager were observed by an anonymous peer to perform signifi cantly better on the job four months later than employees (n = 75) who received the company's traditional performance appraisal interview. The fi nding that the feedforward intervention increased performance relative to the performance appraisal indicates that the effect is a relatively enduring one. The results suggest that the feedforward interview should prove useful for human resource managers who are searching for ways to increase the performance of their organization's human resources over and above the traditional performance appraisal. MARIE-HÉLÈNE BUDWORTH is an associate professor at the School of HRM at York University. Her program of research is focused on individual development within the context of work. Much of her work uses social cognitive theory to understand how people learn, acquire knowledge, make choices, and negotiate with one another in order to succeed. Her work has been published in

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of a couple-level shared identity as forming the basis for the development of dual-career couples' strategies regarding involvement in work and family roles. A model is developed that is intended to help researchers in this area conceptualize the relationship between career choices and career progression between members of a dual career couple. Examining career development at the couple-level extends one's understanding of how the decisions made by one member of the dyad influence the career of the other. Design/methodology/approach -In order to develop this model, the theories of cognitive interdependence and gender role ideology are examined and applied to the formation of a shared identity. Findings -Development of the model, as well as a review of the extant literature, revealed that career decisions in dual career couples are made at the level of the dyad. Practical implications -The findings demonstrate that organizations cannot view their employees in isolation, but that important transitions such as relocation, and taking on more responsibility are decisions that increasingly are made at the couple level. Employers may need to consider the dyad when offering career advancement opportunities and when implementing work-life balance programs. Originality/value -The career progression of one member has implications for the other. Therefore, it is insufficient for an individual to have a career in isolation when the individual is part of a dual career couple. Examination of career at the dyad level will advance one's knowledge of how careers unfold.