by Patricia Sellers

Former White House press secretary Dana Perino (third from left) at the Minute Mentoring event she coordinated. Photo courtesy of Charlotte Sellmyer.

What good is having power unless you give it away?

The quickest and easiest way of dispensing power–and career advice–might be what I saw one night last week in Washington, D.C. It’s called Minute Mentoring. It’s speed dating applied to mentoring.

This pairing of role models and wannabes was beautifully orchestrated chaos. Last Thursday evening, 15 high-powered D.C. women parked themselves inside 15 offices at law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, and in a complex round robin of 10-minute sessions, advised 15 trios of young women how to navigate their careers.

Minute Mentoring is the brainchild of Dana Perino, the former White House Press Secretary in the Bush Administration. She’s now at public relations giant Burson-Marsteller. The idea to apply speed dating to career counseling struck Perino last May, after she gave a speech to a group of young female Congressional staffers and as usual, they converged around her afterwards, asking for “just 15 minutes of your time…I know you’re really busy, but please….Can you just have a quick cup of coffee with me?”

Perino’s notion of “one-stop shopping” for career advice gelled two months ago on her way home from the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. On the plane, she was sitting in a row with Bracewell & Giuliani’s Susan Molinari and Dee Martin, who were fellow Summit attendees. They loved Perino’s idea–and they said, they’d host a Minute Mentoring event.

Susan Molinari dispenses advice to young women. Photo courtesy of Charlotte Sellmyer.

On Thursday at Bracewell’s K Street offices, the 15 mentors who dished advice hastily (a loud whistle marked the start and stop of each 10-minute session) included CNN political correspondent Candy Crowley, Meet the Press executive producer Betsy Fischer, former Clinton White House Press Secretary DeeDee Myers, APCO Worldwide CEO Margery Kraus, Pfizer (PFE) government relations VP Maria Cino, and Fortune Washington Editor Nina Easton, as well as Molinari and Perino.

Over the next couple of weeks on Postcards, my colleague Jessica Shambora will dish to you the career advice and lessons we heard. Meantime, check out this story about the Minute Mentoring event in Saturday’s Washington Post.

And since we’re on the topic of mentoring, I want to mention that the makers of a documentary film called Miss Representation flew in from California to film Jessica at the Minute Mentoring event. They had previously interviewed both Jess and me since we’ve been studying women and power–the topic of the film–for years. They’re so impressed with Jess, as a young star journalist, that they’ve decided to feature her prominently in the film, due out next year.

Good for Jess. And good for mentoring in general. We at Fortune, incidentally, have three programs, through the MPWomen Summit, to help women leaders mentor: a Fortune-U.S. State Department Mentoring Partnership that each year brings rising-star women from developing countries to shadow women leaders in the U.S.; a mentoring partnership with Exxon Mobil (XOM), that pairs math and science experts in the MPWomen community with college students; and a new partnership with American Express (AXP) to find extraordinary female entrepreneurs and expose them to Fortune 500 executives and other female leaders.

Sharing the power is what it’s about, really.

Guest Post by Sharon Meers, co-author of Getting to 50/50

Photo courtesy of Vince Tarry

Do men resent powerful women?

One of the most intriguing statistics in “A Woman’s Nation,” the recently released survey by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, is this: 69% of women think men resent women who have more power than they do. Only 49% of men agree.

Who knows who’s right. What we know for sure is that men and women can’t agree about power–and aren’t very comfortable talking candidly about it.

To research Getting to 50/50, the book I wrote with Joanna Strober, we found that fear of candid talk is the biggest logjam blocking the progress of women in the workplace. For one thing, men shy away from giving women honest feedback. One male CEO of a tech start-up told us: “Every senior male executive I know has been threatened with discrimination charges regardless of the goodness of their track record.” He added, “I’ve seen it make cynics out of a lot of men who started out very differently.”

All of us–men and women alike–contribute to this problem. In our politically correct workplaces, discussing male/female differences has become so taboo that the topic is broached only in heated moments, when colleagues let loose their true opinions about gender and power.

It’s a messy management issue. HR lawyers say that employers ask how to avoid suits when their priority should be retaining and promoting women, with the help of honest dialogue about everything from performance issues to maternity leaves.

But too often, men cower at giving feedback to female subordinates. That CEO of the tech start-up confessed that when he was at a big media company, his peers advised him to leave his office door open during reviews of female employees–and best to stay within earshot of his assistant so he’d have a witness if the employee made a complaint. “How much candor can you offer with your door open?” he asked me rhetorically, with understandable exasperation.

Moreover, lots of line managers keep women out of their networks (and even avoid going out to lunch with them) because it just doesn’t feel comfortable. Many managers steer clear of difficult conversations. Don’t be too hard on the guys: They’ve never been told how to engage the right way.

Rod Kramer, a professor and management expert at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, believes that men’s discomfort relates to a common insecurity: “Men often seem to think (heroically) that they should be masters at the conversation–that they should know the ‘right’ things to say.” His advice to men and women: “Be more curious about each other and their experiences. Just ask good leading questions–and invite questions in return.”

Meanwhile, women’s tendency to be super-serious (as men perceive them, at least) compounds the workplace dysfunction. “Women can make anything a chore,” a former Microsoft (MSFT) executive told me. “They’re too serious and don’t seem to understand that work is a game.”

What should women do? One of our interviewees, Larry, a partner in a national architecture firm, told us about a woman who blew up over her male colleagues’ risqué pin-ups and jocular behavior; she complained to HR and quit. Larry wishes that she had confronted the guys who offended her: “Tell guys to their face,” he says, advising women in general. “Say, ‘Hey, what’s that?’ And be funny about it. You have to do it in a way so that guys don’t feel threatened, but you are making your point.”

In the stories we heard, “right” and “wrong” were rarely obvious. But the need for a male/female lingua franca was clear.

Some wise employers are getting a jump on inventing this new language.

Deloitte, for one, has moved aggressively to bring male and female executives together to discuss questions like “Would you want your daughter to work for a company that has lower expectations for women?” Open dialogue and better insight into what women need to be successful has helped Deloitte command a lead among professional services firms in utilizing female talent.

The University of Michigan has also made strides. With backing from the National Science Foundation, the University enlisted male professors to comb research on implicit gender attitudes. For example, most people will select a resume with a male name over one with a female name, even when the resumes are identical. Professors turned their survey into a workshop and shared their insights with the University’s hiring committees. Female science hires have since risen dramatically.

It may be a long while ’til we reach 50/50. But understanding the issues and learning to understand each other is a good start.

Sharon Meers is the co-author of Getting to 50/50 and a former Managing Director at Goldman Sachs (GS).

by Jessica Shambora

We keep hearing how the economy is improving, but with U.S. unemployment at 9.8% and rising, the job market gives us nothing but anxiety. Today Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) added to the pain by announcing layoffs of 6-7% of its workforce. That’s about 7,000 employees.

While J&J faces lots of industry-specific challenges–patent expirations, increasingly complex regulation, healthcare reform–the news is stunning. Particularly because J&J is known for its legendary credo that puts employees above communities and shareholders–second only to customers in terms of management’s priorities.

CEO Bill Weldon talked with me at length about this–the eminence of J&J’s employees–in interviews that I did with him last Spring. He told me that he says to his employees: “I guarantee we will fight for every one of you that works in this corporation. Does that mean we can always protect every job? Absolutely not. What it does mean is we’re going to do the best we possibly can to ensure we take care of the people that have made the company what it is and fight the battles every day.’”

Assuming that Weldon and J&J’s board haven’t abandoned the company’s age-old credo, might today’s layoffs be a sign that J&J’s fortunes have turned dramatically worse than Weldon anticipated?

“Investors have been asking all day, ‘Is there something worse environmentally than we understand–or than what J&J has relayed to all of us?’” says analyst Rick Wise, who follows the healthcare industry for Leerink Swan. J&J stock closed at $58.93, down nearly 2% for the day.

Wise, who rates the stock “neutral,” says that some investors view the cuts as a desperate grasp for profit growth. But he believes that as a traditionally conservative industry leader, J&J is simply trying to get ahead of the curve in responding to challenges.

“Would J&J have been in trouble today if they hadn’t done it [announced layoffs]? Hard for me to believe,” says Wise. The layoffs, he adds, give the company more freedom and flexibility to invest in areas that management has talked about, like treatments for Alzheimer’s.

J&J’s harsh action leaves many questions unanswered. To me, the two most compelling are: Is this another example of prescient management at the much-admired 123-year-old company? Or are the changes in the world so severe as to force a 123-year-old company to let go of its precious credo to take care of its employees?

For more on J&J’s legendary culture, read a piece I co-wrote with Geoff Colvin earlier this year, “J&J: Secrets of Success” and check out my interview with J&J CEO Bill Weldon below.

“The lesson of today is that you’re working for yourself.”

–Janice Bryant Howroyd,  founder and CEO of staffing company Act 1 Personnel Services, in The New York Times. Howroyd’s advice is yet another take on the the advice that in these uncertain times, it’s smart to stay flexible and adapt. As the employment landscape transforms and companies try to keep pace, workers have to do the same. This can mean refreshing skills, considering temporary or part-time work, and even accepting lower pay to stay in the game.

“Most people say they’re giving their lives to the company, but it’s more of a cooperative process. Companies have tasks to perform and you must put in your best effort and identify yourself with that job,” not with the company,” Howroyd says. If you can’t be your own boss, at least be the boss of your career. –Jessica Shambora

by Patricia Sellers

Sallie Krawcheck

A hot job offer dangles before you. How do you know if it’s right? Sometimes you feel it in your gut. And sometimes you get a big, bloody warning sign. Like Sallie Krawcheck did before she opted to join Bank of America (BAC).

Krawcheck, the former Citigroup (C) star who joined BofA in August to head its Global Wealth and Investment Management unit, told a story last evening in an on-stage conversation with my Fortune colleague Carol Loomis at Manhattan’s Museum of American Finance. While she ducked all questions about who might replace departing BofA CEO Ken Lewis (she’s rumored to be in the running, but she’s a longshot), Krawcheck had the audience rolling as she talked about another job that she almost took–until things went awry.

This other job, explained Krawcheck, 44, was “a leadership opportunity at a troubled financial-services company.” The initial meeting with the prospective employer required a flight out of New York. “For the first time in my life, I overslept and almost missed the plane.” No time for a shower, she threw on her clothes. “I think my pajamas were on underneath,” she said.

She thought to herself: “This doesn’t feel very good.”

Krawcheck made it to the meeting, however, and it went well. The second meeting took place, conveniently, in Manhattan. This was a beautiful spring day. Wearing a new suit and new shoes, she recalled, “I couldn’t have been feeling more pleased with myself.”

That is, until Krawcheck, while walking down Madison Avenue to her meeting, caught the heel of her new shoe in a crack in the sidewalk.

“I went flying down onto a grate,” she said. “I stood up, spit out a tooth. Blood was everywhere.”

Still, she was determined: “I can make the meeting. I can make the meeting!”

“I did not make the meeting. Nor did I eat solid food for the next six weeks.”

“I ended up with six stitches, one broken tooth, a hairline jaw fracture, a dislocated jaw and whiplash.”

Yes, the meeting happened, eventually. In fact, the fit between Krawcheck and this financial-services company seemed ideal. She accepted the job offer.

And then, when she went to sign the employment agreement, “I promptly threw up. And I thought, I don’t think this is right for me.”

And that’s how Sallie Krawcheck, No. 30 on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business list, passed up one big opportunity before accepting another at BofA.

The uncut version of Yahoo (YAHOO) CEO Carol Bartz’s first-person “Just Deal With It,” which we published on Postcards last Monday, drew lots of traffic. So we’re giving you an unedited version of another first-person piece that appeared in Fortune’s Most Powerful Women issue (September 28). This one is by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. The most senior woman at Google (GOOG) before she joined Facebook, Sandberg is one of the fastest rising stars in business–leaping to No. 22, from No. 34, on this year’s MPWomen list–and one of the youngest too. Her resume includes two degrees from Harvard, stints at the World Bank and the U.S. Treasury, board memberships at Starbucks (SBUX) and the Brookings Institution…and she’s only 40.

In fact, it was Sandberg’s out-of-the-blue phone call from Mexico, where she was celebrating her 40th birthday with old girlfriends, that led to this piece. “I want to write something called “Don’t Leave Before You Leave,” about young women cutting back their career ambition, and would you consider running it your Most Powerful Women issue?” she asked me over a static-y cell connection. I immediately said “Yes” because I knew Sandberg’s commitment to encouraging the next generation of women leaders. (Her home dinner gatherings of established and up-and-coming women are sought-after invites in Silicon Valley.) I also knew Sandberg to be an adept juggler of family and career. What I didn’t know: She can write. So here is Sheryl Sandberg’s “Don’t Leave Before You Leave,” the unedited version:

Last week at work I had a conversation with a woman I will call Jamie. We have a new project, and I offered her the opportunity to be its leader.  She seemed flattered to be asked but then quickly became very hesitant. She told me she wasn’t sure she should take on more right now. Just before she got up to leave, I looked at her and quietly asked, “Are you worried about taking this on because you are considering getting pregnant sometime soon?”

A few years ago I would have been afraid to ask such a direct and personal question. Nothing is more private than the decision to have a child. Bringing up that topic in the workplace feels like a dangerous thing to do.  We are not supposed to show any bias or take childbearing plans into account as we manage people. But after watching talented woman after talented woman let her career go before she actually leaves it, I now ask this question and I ask it directly.

I always give people the option of not answering, but so far, everyone has appeared grateful for a chance to talk.  There is just one reason why I ask–to make sure people aren’t leaving before they leave.

Here is what happens.  An ambitious and successful woman starts considering having children, typically once she finds a domestic partner. She thinks hard about how busy she is and realizes that finding time for a child means something will have to give. As soon as that thinking process starts, she is already looking for ways to scale back. She no longer searches for new opportunities; if any are presented to her, she is likely to decline or offer the kind of hesitant “yes” that gets the project assigned to someone else, just like “Jamie” did last week in my office.

The problem is that even if she gets pregnant immediately, she still has nine months of pregnancy ahead of her, months of maternity leave and then another lengthy period after returning to work to even catch her breath. And since women usually start the thinking process before even trying to conceive, often several years actually pass. By the time she is back to focusing on her career, she is in a radically different place than she was before.

She was always a top performer–always on par with her peers in responsibility, opportunity, and pay. But now she is not. By not finding ways to stretch herself during the years before she has a child, she has fallen behind.

While I don’t believe that the choice to work fulltime and be a parent is the right choice for everyone, it is a wonderful–and often necessary–choice for many people. I also believe that once you have a child, it becomes necessary to make real changes, including potentially deemphasizing your career. But slowing down too early is a mistake that too many women make today, often without even realizing it. Because they sincerely want to stay in the workforce, they try to make room for everything and they slow down–or unconsciously pull back–well before their circumstances actually change. By the time they fully return, they are in jobs that no longer challenge or reward them enough to hold their attention.

I don’t know any women–or men for that matter–who do not have days when they wonder if leaving their children in someone else’s care for their careers is the right thing to do. I know I do. If your job feels less fulfilling because you have been in the same role for too long or are no longer paid comparably to your peers, that choice becomes a hard one to make day after day. One of the tragic ironies for working women today is that the very desire to stay in the workforce leads to decisions that eventually cause them to leave.

No one can know in advance the choices they will make after going through a life change as profound as becoming a parent. But if you want to preserve the option of staying in the workforce and building a career, my advice is simple.  Stay fully engaged, take on new and interesting challenges, and do so until you have a child. Keep your foot on the gas pedal until your life actually changes. Then you can make the decision to keep driving quickly, slow down, or step out of the car.

I joined Facebook as its COO when I had just returned to work from having my second child. The timing was far from ideal. As many people had told me–but I had not believed–having two children was more than double the work of having one. At the time I was not looking for a new opportunity but rather trying to get through each day. But both my husband and I recognized that if I waited until the time was exactly right, the opportunity would be gone. So I jumped in.

I can’t say it was easy. The first six months were a struggle both at work and at home. But now I am settled in, finding just enough balance to make it work, and learning and growing with new responsibilities and challenges.  Looking back, if I hadn’t taken on something new, I might easily have left the workforce by now, because it would not have been worth making the daily tradeoffs to continue in the job I’d held for the previous six years.

There is a broader lesson here that applies not just to women contemplating starting a family, but to anyone trying to plan for the future. Making decisions too early, trying to plan life too carefully, can close doors rather than keep them open. Any time you make a plan, you do it with imperfect information; the further in advance you make that plan, the less information you have. You never know how you will feel or what choices you might face.  Take life one step at a time and don’t make decisions before you have to.

A few months ago we were interviewing a fantastic woman to join Facebook’s Business Development team. After we extended an offer, she came in to ask some follow-up questions about the role. She did not mention lifestyle or hours. But she was the typical age of the people who leave before they leave.  So I shocked her by asking the question no one asks. “Priti,” I said, “I’m sorry for bringing up something so personal, and feel free to tell me you don’t want to discuss it. But just in case you are thinking that you might want to have a child sometime soon and need to stay where you are to have room to slow down, I’d love a chance to tell you why that makes it even more important that you change jobs now.”

Priti accepted our offer. And just a few weeks later, she found out she was pregnant. Her timing could not have been better.

“Progress comes in fits and starts and we’re going to need to grind out this recovery.”

–President Obama, responding to today’s dismal jobs report that showed much greater losses than expected. The reported net loss of 263,000 jobs for September was up from 201,000 in August, and the unemployment rate of 9.8% hit another 26-year high. “I’ve made the point that employment is often the last thing to come back after a recession, and that’s what history shows us,” the President said. “But our task is to do everything we can possibly do to accelerate that process.”

Meanwhile, the teen unemployment rate hit a record high 25.9%, with young minority workers disproportionately affected. At 37%, the rate of unemployed African American teens is four times the national average. “The full effects of that lost opportunity will be felt for years to come,” says Kristen Lopez Eastlick, Senior Research Analyst for the Employment Policies Institute. –Jessica Shambora

by Jessica Shambora

On the heels of last week’s news that Avon (AVP) president Liz Smith is leaving to pursue a CEO job outside the company, another powerful woman is departing to seek a new C-suite challenge. eBay (EBAY) announced today that Stephanie Tilenius, head of marketplaces for North America, is leaving.

Tilenius, 42, will stay on as an advisor to CEO John Donahoe for the next few months, but her position will not be filled. Instead, Lorrie Norrington, global head of  marketplaces (and No. 40 on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list) will assume responsibility for the division–reinforcing Norrington’s rising profile at eBay.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while and it feels like the right time,” Tilenius told Fortune on Monday. “I spent nearly at decade at eBay and I want to look for where I’m going to spend the next decade.”

During her nine years at eBay, Tilenius covered a lot of ground, from leading operations in Korea and Asia-Pacific, to heading  eBay Motors, to building PayPal to $1 billion in revenue — and finally, to helping to revitalize the marketplaces division. That these assignments involved creating or building businesses within eBay is no coincidence. Tilenius’s entrepreneurial roots go back to her first job out of Harvard Business School. Instead of accepting an offer from Goldman Sachs (GS), Tilenius went to work for a startup named Firefly.

“I was probably one of 10 people that joined an Internet company out of Harvard in 1996. It was definitely the path not traveled,” she told Fortune last September.

After Firefly was sold to Microsoft (MSFT), Tilenius went on to co-found PlanetRx.com, which she took public in 1999 (postponing her honeymoon for the company’s road show). But the Internet startup–an online healthcare and e-commerce site–burst with the Internet bubble. Laying off 400 people was one of hardest things Tilenius has ever done, but she made a list of lessons  learned that she still refers to today.

That list–and several others like it that Tilenius has made in the wake of her many leadership experiences at eBay–could come in handy as she prepares for her next job. In a note to employees today, Tilenius wrote, “I am eager to explore new learning curves and other adventures in life such as becoming CEO of a smaller company.”

Lorna Borenstein, a friend and former eBay colleague says she can see Tilenius as either a CEO of a late-stage startup or as head of a large division of a multinational company. “She’s such a great strategist and she loves growing things,” says Borenstein.  “I see her looking for a big meaty opportunity where she can have her fingerprints all over it.”

Tilenius, who enjoys competing in triathlons and open-water swims, says her next gig “has to be something where there’s a big leadership challenge, an opportunity to make an impact and change people’s lives.” Given her background in the hot areas of consumer Internet, e-commerce, and payments, Tilenius may want to take her time deciding and hold out for the highest bidder.

For more on Tilenius, click here to watch a video of her discussing how she defines power at a Fortune Most Powerful Women dinner in San Francisco  last summer. Tilenius was also featured in Pattie’s story on female rising stars in Silicon Valley, “The New Valley Girls“, in last year’s Most Powerful Women issue, and in a related Q&A online.

by Jessica Shambora

We’re toiling away on this year’s Fortune Most Powerful Women in Business list, due out September 10. Anything can happen up to the minute we go to press, and this news today caused us to shuffle those yet-to be-unveiled rankings: Procter & Gamble’s (PG) Melanie Healey is moving up to head the company’s enormous North American business, effective October 1.

No. 37 on last year’s MPWomen list, Healey currently heads global feminine & health care, a $9 billion business that includes Tampax, Vicks and Prilosec OTC. Her new purview brings in 40% of P&G’s total revenue. That’s $32 billion in sales.

Actually, Healey, 48, was destined to be a global operator. She was born in Rio de Janeiro to a British father and a Chilean mother. She went to college in the U.S.–graduating from the University of Richmond–but began her career back in Brazil with  S.C. Johnson and then Johnson & Johnson (JNJ). She joined P&G in 1990. Over the next 11 years until she got worldwide responsibilities, she helped build the company in Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela.

Healey’s promotion follows a raft of management changes at the consumer-goods giant. In March, Susan Arnold, president of global business units and No.7 on Fortune’s 2008 Most Powerful Women list, announced she was leaving. She was a contender to succeed CEO A.G. Lafley. Soon after came the news that COO Robert McDonald would replace Lafley. That transition happened in July.

Healey’s promotion, says P&G spokesman Paul Fox, is simply part of the company’s leadership development program. (She’s swapping jobs with Steven Bishop, who held the top North America post and will now run global feminine care.) Clearly, though, Healey’s new job sets her up to be part of the next generation of P&G leadership.

Whatever the future holds for her, Healey has a claim to fame that’s practically unmatched. Last year at a late-night bridge tournament at the  Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, she beat Warren Buffett.

It’s hard to believe this is August. Because I’m working way too hard.

You too?

Unless you’re one of the growing multitude out of work–with no job at all–no doubt you are. Here’s evidence of the working-too-hard trend in a new McKinsey study called “Leaders in the Crisis”: Executives are working harder than ever–55 hours per week, vs. 45, on average,  before the global economic crisis began.

McKinsey also suggests that executives aren’t being very smart about how to motivate employees in these trying times. Executives whom they surveyed said they motivate their people mainly by “talking about company’s values and direction” and “talking about company’s financial performance.”

Seriously, how can you inspire when “financial performance” is probably nothing to brag about?

A better way to motivate workers, McKinsey’s consultants suggest, is to help build their skills, publicly recognize high performance, and show interest beyond their work. “Making personal connections and helping managers find meaning in their work” is more important than ever, McKinsey contends.

This onus on executives also makes leading and managing more difficult than ever before. Want advice? Check out yesterday’s Postcards Guest Post, “How to Inspire Your People”, by MediaCom CEO Stephen Allan, who is quite savvy on the subject. Incidentally, after reading the post yesterday, WPP (WPPGY) CEO Martin Sorrell, who is Allan’s boss, emailed me to say that his message is right on.

If you’re really stressed out and working too hard, my best advice is: Do not move to Asia. A study of “Prices and Earnings” in cities across the globe, released by UBS (UBS) yesterday, is trove of fascinating stats, and among them: People work 1,902 hours per year, on average, in the cities that UBS surveyed, but they work longest in Asian cities. The average in Asia: 2,119 hours annually. The most onerous work hours, actually, are in Cairo, where employees clock 2,373 hours annually. Seoul comes in a close second.

And who, among global citizens, are smartest in terms of holding a job and keeping short hours? Workers in Lyon and Paris, says the UBS survey. Oh, how I envy the French, especially in August!