Women in Leadership – are we fit for the future?

“Act your way into a new way of thinking, 

don’t think your way into a new way of acting.”

 

Richard Pascale

 

Organisations must act…. Now.  The 10% of women in UK boardrooms could not only stagnate at its current growth rate but it could potentially reverse.  Talent is increasingly intolerant over a whole host of issues that blight our organisations today – social responsibility, time spent on innovation, inflexibility, work life balance, supportive cultures, the list goes on – ‘women in leadership’ is just one, a very important one.  It is yet another factor that will force talent out the door.  And not just to the competitors (because chances are they’re making the same mistakes you are) but to set up new companies that forge micro-environments that operate at the edge and exploit the niche – companies with edge that may not be a danger over the next decade but will end up eating the lunch of the dinosaurs they abandoned in their droves.

 

What can organisations do to prepare for, and combat, the ‘age of the quota’?  Evaluation of this issue must begin with ‘why’.  So why are women under-represented in the boardrooms?  From what I can see there are a number of factors at work here and therefore the ‘fault’ lies at a number of doors.  Firstly, it is an issue of style, pure and simple.  Research has shown that women are much more likely to get on with the job in a quiet and reliable fashion (perhaps not so quietly in some cases!) and let their work speak for itself.  When promotions are on the table they often need to be talked into it.  Is this an indication that women still see it as ‘unladylike’ to make demands?  One statistic that brings this to light is that, upon entering the workforce, 57% of men negotiate their salaries compared to only 7% of women.  When applying for promotions women will hold back unless they feel confident they satisfy 100% of the selection criteria.  Men will ‘have a go’ if they feel they satisfy approximately 60%.  So is it a fear of exposure or failure that stops women taking that risk?  To address this issue, and allow our best talent to come to the fore, I would ask myself this:  Are the promotion processes currently at work in my business allowing for this dynamic?  If women are less likely to apply for promotion, and ‘Mr. 60%’ is making it to the next level, what signal does this send to the talent below?  Is my candidate list a true representation of the skills I wish to reward in my business?  Surely, if we redefine the process, it must run deeper into the organisation than the mere ‘application / interview process’?

 

Secondly, is the access to effective mentoring, or should I say ‘lack of’.  This partly permeates back to the ‘style’ point but the case remains that, when mentored, women are often ‘supported’ whereas men are ‘advocated’.  In my role as an executive coach I see this issue and its ramifications loud and clear.  I coach a number of women who struggle to balance this unnecessary and often debilitating dynamic.  As well as ‘doing the day job’, they must attempt to view the organisation, their challenges and conduct effective relationships whilst attempting to sneak out from under the watchful glare of mentors, and in some cases, their managers, who protect them from the ‘real story’.  How is anyone supposed to perform effectively in a role where they are only exposed to half the story?  Organisations must wake up and do their talent a favour.  As a healthy, modern company that is supposedly unlocking the potential in our resource by investing time and effort in mentoring schemes why do we allow this additional challenge to stand in the way of a well-defined and vital segment of resource.  Whilst trying to ‘have it all’ women are actually struggling to cope.

 

Thirdly comes the slightly murky world of networking, negotiation and politics.  My clients are in a constant state of shock when I break the news to them that their company, and certainly the upper echelons of power, operates as a somewhat intimidating political beast.  Every organisation over five people has a political network and it is a battle to get women to admit this even exists let alone operating alongside it and viewing it as a ‘force for good’.  Research has shown that women are good networkers but this is most pronounced outside their company.  In this respect then, women are ‘recession proof’ – but that’s a topic for another time.  The fact remains that informal networks inside an organisation are still very much a man’s playground.  The idea of trading social capital in the realization of day-to-day business is something that women will have to get to grips with.  It happens, it will continue to happen and if women ignore it, or think they are ‘bigger than it’ they will continue to struggle.  It’s the way of the world and will become increasingly important in the future as collaboration and alignment take the fore.  Relationships are vital.  They are the makers and the breakers.

 

The fourth factor is, upon initial appraisal, potentially one of ‘traditional bias’, stereotype and prevalence of role models.  If men are used to running businesses and would characterize the necessary behavior as ‘passionate’ and never ‘emotional’ then we are drawing battle lines before we even begin.  However, to voice a shift in focus, I believe when we scratch the surface of this issue it is plain to see that organisations are more much to blame for permitting functional in-fighting than we realize.  To expand upon this, when times are good businesses are much more likely to organize themselves functionally as opposed to divisionally and therefore, recent crisis apart, we are still staring into a world of divisive functional structures.  In the embryonic stages of their careers men and women enter businesses across all functions – they is no split or bias here.  However, through the structural maneuvering across a few years, a few promotions in and we see that women are more likely to end up taking roles in ‘female-friendly’ functions – legal, human resources, marketing, risk and compliance, to name a few.  This is all very well and good until you couple it with the trench warfare and the lack of alignment marring most companies we are working with currently.  In our work executing change programmes over the past decade I have seen many relationships, both individual and functional, suffer under the ‘they don’t understand my business / why should I waste my time educating them about what really goes on out here / they’re deluded if they think that’s on my priority list’, and so it goes on.  The front line businesses are much more likely to be male-dominated and the support functions are populated by a higher proportion of women.  Therefore, is the functional bias working its way into gender bias?  Leaders (and this is a monumental leadership challenge) must push functions together, increase exposure, allow a ‘real-time view’ of the challenges we all face and let stakeholder relationships truly align the business, for everyone’s sake.

 

The last issue is one of generational dynamics.  There is a move afoot in the modern workforce and it’s not just a result of the smartphone or social media, as everyone would like to believe.  The baby-boomers are retiring.  They leave a legacy of non-compromise, ‘rip up the rule book’, work all the hours and challenge authority attitude.  Generation X follows.  Into the void it goes.  The first generation to experience two working parents, witness corporate downsizing on a vast scale and socially, the first generation to be victims of divorce.  Their attitude to authority (distrusting) and work life balance (vehemently defensive) creates a certain type of character.  Working all the hours, possibly for boomers, and ‘paying their dues’ they will expect a leadership reward – and the stakes are too high to deny them.  It will be a shift in style for sure but this generation is the sandwich generation in many ways.  They will deal with the fallout from quotas (the ‘stick’ is necessary to accelerate the glacial shift) and will bear that burden for the next generation.  The teething issues around ‘merit versus quota’ will be a well-documented struggle but it must happen.  Generation Y however, who are 30 and under and epitomize the ‘talent’ in most organisations currently, are uncompromising, impatient and ruled by instant gratification.  This is where I believe the misalignment in generational outlook is most marked, and will have a profound effect over the next decade.  If they don’t see the supportive and innovative culture that they were promised at interview actually at work in companies they won’t hang around for 3 years to see if it improves.  They will leave, in droves.  This is a huge generation, in numbers and in character.  They are the children of the boomers and there are millions of them.  This won’t be a battle for talent on the street.  It will be a battle to keep them in corporate life at all.  They will leave and set up innovative, flexible, tolerant, diverse, socially responsible companies of their own and, perhaps not tomorrow or next month, but one day, in a few years or so, they’ll begin eating your lunch.  Because you were asleep.  

 

In conclusion, making your organisation fit for the future should be the priority – only then will you, by default, address the diversity issue, in all its merry guises.  ‘Positive discrimination’ is a hotbed for negative energy and is certainly not conducive to motivating your people.  Rip up the processes of the past, look under the plant pot and really see what talent is there, work out how best to realize it within the culture of your business and watch it burn a light in the night sky.  This is not a ‘woman issue’.  This is an attitudinal shift to the future of work.