Speaker’s Corner – October 2009

Developing Women Leaders: What organizations, managers & HR can do

Anna Marie Valerio, Ph. D.

Executive Leadership Strategies, LLC

The topic of female leaders drums up intriguing questions. For one, why are there less female leaders in the workforce, despite…?

A.              Women earn the majority of undergraduate and Master’s degrees
B.              Women are a large proportion of the talent pool available for leadership
C.              ROI is higher for companies with female executives

Other questions raised by METRO members:

Why are women reluctant to help other women in the workplace?
Why are women leaders treated differently than men?
How are the traits of leaders in women-centric companies different?
Most women’s careers are truncated before they get to top positions. Does this have to do with legislation, culture, prejudice?

Dr. Valerio attempted to answer these and many other questions on women leaders. She did 40 interviews from 2006 to 2008 with “high achieving” men and women in Fortune 500 companies. Her book Developing Women Leaders: A guide for men and women in organizations documents her findings and offers practical solutions geared to the many audiences (i.e. CEO’s, male leaders, female leaders, HR professionals, researchers, organizations as a whole) that are likely to benefit. During her research, she delved into the complex issues surrounding this topic, which she says have yet to be solved. She is excited to open up the dialogue again.

Understanding how gender biases operate is essential to comprehending the issues surrounding female leaders. Both men and women internalize gender stereotypes. Men are perceived as agentic (assertive, aggressive, dominant, ambitious, & tough) and women are perceived as communal (helpful, friendly, sensitive, empathic, & nurturing). Agentic qualities coincide with the characteristics of a good leader. Male leaders exhibiting agentic behaviors are accepted because they are acting in-line with expectations of male behavior. Female leaders exhibiting agentic characteristics are often viewed negatively because they are not acting in-line with expectations.  We expect women to be nurturing and prefer there to be little deviation from our expectations. Furthermore, women who fail to display the agentic qualities, viewed as essential in a good leader, are perceived as less competent. “Women have to dip in both bags,” Dr. Valerio said. They have to be strong leaders and be warm.

Dr. Valerio says the key to eliminating prejudice is to increase self-awareness of its use. Training people to recognize gender biases while reiterating that subjective perceptions can lead to erroneous conclusions may derail future biased decisions.

What Mangers Can Do

Managers work closest to our future leaders. More than CEO’s, executives, HR, etc., they have an opportunity to base perceptions on actual experience and not prejudice when determining their employees’ worth to the organization. Managers can contribute to fairness by ensuring that women also have adequate access to opportunities, such as challenging assignments, external coaches, and support resources. Teams operate better if women are proportionally represented. Most importantly, managers need to fully endorse the authority of female leaders. This is most essential when women lead projects or teams in other cultures that are less supportive of female leadership roles. 

Dr. Valerio further differentiates how male and female managers can enable the advancement of women. She suggests that male managers increase their understanding of women’s perspectives, in addition to championing female leadership development in their organization. She also discusses the tendency for male managers to avoid giving feedback to women in fear of emotional outbreaks. Women need their performance feedback too, even if it makes men uncomfortable. Female managers can help by becoming involved with female networks, inspiring other women by sharing experiences. Women need to recognize the unique diversity among women. The within-group differences are often greater than the between-group differences. In other words, there is as much difference among women as there are between men and women. Female managers also need to avoid reducing women to labels.

What CEOs and HR Can Do

Networking is essential for both men and women. Thus, female managers need comparable access to formal and informal opportunities for mentoring, as well as contact with external coaches for high-powered women and women’s networks and leadership forums. Furthermore, women should be part of the most essential opportunities for development: plum assignments, external development, and international programs. Plum assignments are advantageous assignments that can likely prove worth to a company. External development involves stretch assignments focused on a particular project. International programs are semi-permanent projects in another country, giving the person valuable experience without a long-term commitment.

In addition, the company should build metrics to track trends in areas, such as cross-gender mentoring, attitude and engagement of women, objectives in recruitment, and promotion & retention of women.

What Organizations & HR Can Do

As baby boomers retire, there will be a shortage of talent. Thus, talent management and commitment to diversity should be top priorities in organizations to “minimize human capital risk.” Understanding women leaders and being able to maximize their talent is essential for organizations of the future. Commitment to diversity should be communicated from the top down. A feedback-rich environment that holds managers accountable for diversity and adequately measures performance of gender-related issues will enable better understanding of programs and policies that are obstacles for the advancement of women. For instance, how effectively are women being on-boarded, maintained in key positions, & retained?

Organizations that are flexible in how the work is done and how careers are built fare better with women. Programs, such as flex work assignments and flex time are advantageous for men and women. For example, Deloitte & Touche aims to view at their employees’ careers holistically, understanding that career paths are not “one size fits all”. Every year, employees and managers discuss their career paths. Goals are customized to current life situations and priorities with the understanding that their employee lives change, and thus, so does the time they can devote to their job - some years your job is top priority and some years other aspects of your life are priority. A company that recognizes this is more likely to retain key talent.

Reported by Ashley Busing