The best ways to boost female leadership statistics
I am an advocate for greater diversity in business leadership roles for two reasons. First, there’s plenty of evidence that diverse leadership teams produce better results. Second, from a social justice standpoint. it’s the right thing to do.
Moving beyond superficial gestures
But I’m tired of seeing large sums of money wasted on “window dressing” and “signaling” initiatives. Here’s a personal example. For about 15 years I’ve been trying to use images of diverse people in my PowerPoint presentations—old, young, male, female, Black, white, etc. I think that’s a good idea. But if I don’t back it up with an effort to really understand the different experiences and needs of those groups, it’s a pretty shallow effort.
That’s why I was pleased to see a recent article in the March newsletter, In Touch, from my alma mater, The Ivey School of Business at Western University, “Tearing down the window dressing: how firms can effectively increase female representation.” Citing recent research by Alison Konrad, professor of Organizational Behavior at Ivey, the article offered these practical suggestions for getting more women into leadership roles:
Organizations are not all alike, so solutions are not all alike (duh!). Start by analyzing your company’s current gender composition at each level of the hierarchy.
In male-dominated industries, the key is hiring more women into middle-management roles. I find this interesting, since I have written previously about the importance of these roles in many businesses.
Hiring more women into these roles shows that the company values their input and attracts more women to entry-level roles.
In female-dominated industries, the key is hiring more women in entry-level roles, which leads to larger numbers of women in management roles.
The most troubling finding is that there is no clear progression up the management hierarchy for women—no natural flow for women to move up from low-level management to middle management and then to upper management. This means that besides hiring top female talent at all levels, companies need to increase their efforts to identify and develop the top female talent within their ranks.
Let’s start, support substantive changes
As far as I’m concerned, out with the coffee klatches and Women’s Day celebrations and in with targeted, inclusive recruitment and leadership development programs for top talent of all stripes. Let’s put our money and energy into the programs that will actually make an impact.
If you want to talk more about accessing diverse top talent for your organization, contact me at ggolden@gailgoldenconsulting.com.
