Never in a million years would anyone guessed that a container ship stuck sideways in the Suez Canal would shut down global trade routes for almost a week. The cost to the economy was about $400 million for each hour of blockage, while tugboats tried to free it. Quickly a grim reality set in as some ships began to attempt other routes around land as the rest watched a lone tractor attempt to free the Evergreen one shovel at a time.
As a female leader, how do you forego problems that may not be on your radar, just off on the horizon, and go forward with great confidence to reach your full potential. Perhaps one of the best approaches is to follow and learn from others. In Marcel Schwantes’ article titled “How do you build confidence in and out of the office, she shares how the business world has made tremendous strides to ensure more women are reaching the C-suite, but how many still struggle with low self-confidence — the ultimate roadblock for women on their path to reaching their full potential. The CEOs she interviewed shared their insights on silencing self-doubt and embracing self-confidence to find success, sharing such advice as: Believe in yourself, practice self confidence and assurance, pay attention to small things, put yourself out there, always be prepared and keep learning, build competence, reflect, be open minded, make corrections, don’t accept failure, do accept lessons learned, celebrate wins, embrace professional development, coaching and mentors.
In a book by Jennifer Dulski titled Purposeful: Are You a Manager or a Movement Starter, she shares inspiring stories and great leadership advice and shared lessons on how something little can lead to something big. Her insightful look at people making a difference is an inspiration. Dulski says, “Knowing whether we’ve had an impact on others is not the point. Living a life in pursuit of a positive impact is what matters. You don’t have to be extraordinary to create extraordinary change.” She says all it takes is one small step, because you never know where that step will lead.
According to Know Your Value founder and “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, women over 50 are having a movement. Miller Hawkins Mika Brzezinski once believed that a woman’s value was almost always linked to her youth and appearance. She knows now, that is not true. Recently she told Forbes magazine how she overcame the “age trap” and found more success, power, and fulfillment with each passing year of her career.
Are Women Having a Movement
The short answer is yes, but it has been a slow uphill battle. Positive changes are due in part to the more recent Women on Boards Movement that began in 2010, along with an accelerated focus on gender imbalances and an increase in diversity initiatives on corporate boards. We are now seeing some progress and in 2019 a goal was set to have 20% women directors on corporate boards of Russell 3000 Index companies. This goal was exceeded with a historic 22.6% of corporate board seats achieved in 2020. Then in 2021, a 50/50 Women on Boards initiative was launched – as a new bold forward movement towards accelerating gender balance and diversity on corporate boards that also included embracing male allies committed to advancing women began. And although women in the U.S. held the majority of jobs for the first time in almost a decade at 50.04% as of December 2020 the numbers show there is still much work to be done to break into the top positions (code for highly paid). For example, out of the Russell 3000 companies nationwide, only 5% have gender-balanced boards. Today, there are still roughly only 40 female CEOs leading Fortune 500 companies. It’s better than days of past, but still too far off and distant to feel celebratory.
In a bright spot, about 90% of publicly traded companies based in California are now in compliance — with women being added to at least two dozen all-male boards just since July 2020. Although the number of women in boardrooms is rising, sexual parity still remains a distant prospect. According to the accounting giant Deloitte’s most recent report on the issue, released in October 2020, women hold just 16.9% of board seats worldwide, only a 1.9-point increase from 2017. California is a little better with women now holding 21.2% of the board seats at the state’s 444 largest corporations.
In the boardrooms of the 414 companies on the Russell 3000 lists in both 2018 and 2019, female corporate directors gained 183 seats between July 2018 and June 2019. Still, 36 of the Russell 3000 companies in California had no women on their boards as of June 2020. The Russell 3000 tracks the performance of the 3,000 largest U.S.-traded stocks. And while many publicly held companies have placed women in key positions at the top as their number twos, one still has to ask if it is just symbolic tokenism in play.
What’s the business case for having women in the C-Suite
Until now so many women have only dreamed of starting at the entry level and then working their way up over time into a supervisory or management position within their company. Many of us never dreamed of aspiring to the position of CEO of a company. Mostly I think that is because as individuals…equal access has felt so completely unattainable in our lifetime unless of course you went out on your own to carve out some unique niche business (e.g. a skin care line, makeup, daycare, or personal care services geared toward female consumers) or you joined an organization like Avon that allowed you to feel as though you were running your own business. Today, as more women have joined the ranks of leadership and firms have change their strategic approach to innovation, companies are experiencing better business outcomes due in part to the female influence.
Although women are still not being invited to have the same experiences that lead to the same advancement opportunities as their male counterparts, women are still gaining as a group. And while many studies only focus on the causal relationships between successful businesses with women on their boards, anecdotal stories aside, there is a real void of evidence that actually backs up these findings. I would argue however that this is not because clear evidence cannot be found, but rather due to a lack of interest and historical support in championing such initiatives for equality in female leadership ranks. To examine today’s work environments, and appetite for female advancement, we need to track the representation of women in corporate leadership in real time and determine the root causes of gender gaps; some companies are now doing exactly that. In this approach we will be able to use fact-based, scientific methods to explore barriers and measure success in the future.
We still see that women are commonly having to provide more evidence of their competence than men, only to have their judgment questioned in their area of expertise more frequently. When we look at how women create paths to executive leadership positions it is not surprising to see they do it with a more typical female approach by simultaneously courting change and avoiding risk. This is mostly because of the punitive microaggressions we have either encountered firsthand or from watching other women become marginalized and ghosted. To advance to the highest corporate levels, many women understand that they need to carefully avoid being viewed as aggressive or overly assertive, while simultaneously promoting novel strategies to overcome stereotypes of timidness. And at the same time, women often employ a hyper vigilance to avoid costly mistakes that comes with being the only one of an underrepresented group.
Known as the double-bind, many female leaders move forward only after carefully weighing the benefits of their innovative proposals against the risks. Only once we are comfortable with the level of risk do we then become comfortable moving forward with decisiveness. It’s not that women are uncomfortable challenging the status quo or that we are more risk adverse, but rather these sorts of attitudes fundamentally decrease once it feels safe and our male counterparts become open minded to embrace more diverse perspectives.
Is it possible that having increased diversity in leadership creates greater value? Having a wider range of opinions to consider often slows down decision-making, and decreases the chances that the group will make rash or risky decisions. Despite there being a clear moral argument for increasing diversity among top management teams, adding women to the C-Suite simply changes how companies think.
The integration of female leaders at the highest levels of an organization impacts its approach to innovation, and ultimately suggests that including more women in executive decision-making may lead firms to consider a wider variety of value creation strategies from diverse perspectives. For companies wanting to stay relevant, it’s important to understand how marginalization is a cancer. It silences the voices of diverse groups by “othering” them. Marginalized employees begin to look for work elsewhere, and with their departure go diverse ideas and perspectives that could help companies evolve.
To continue the forward momentum and build on women advancement I encourage every organization to focus at the macro level on four key areas:
Advance Women: Increase the representation of women, particularly women from racially and ethnically marginalized groups, in corporate leadership and promoting equal access to career opportunities. If you cannot fund more position or add more female leaders to your ranks, then perhaps you could benefit from bringing in a consultant to help you develop an advisory board.
Women and the Future of Work: Develop solutions for women and underrepresented groups to have full participation and equal opportunity in the 21st-century workplace. Evaluate and address the systemic workplace systems that are outdated and no longer serve all of your employees. For systemic changes to last, we must look at resource shortages and acknowledge the void in your current support systems for women in the workplace. Everyone can benefit by looking at your hiring practices, pay system and leave policies.
Lead for Equity and Inclusion: Deepen the understanding of workplace inclusion and remedy inequities across intersections of identity (such as gender, race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, or gender identity). Understand how employees from different backgrounds experience the workplace as you build internal programs (intersectionality) that foster teams that are inclusive, where there is a fair distribution of work. Every part of the system must be transparent and feel real, inclusive, interdependent, and united for all employees. Embrace and fund training initiatives.
MARC (Men Advocating Real Change): Engage men to leverage their influence to be an advocate for gender equity in the workplace. Planning and intentional allyship must be embraced to support collaboration and problem solving. Train managers and supervisors to be coaches, mentors, and sponsors to diverse individuals at work. Build workplace cultures that places a high value on male and female allyship behaviors.
On the micro level we need solutions to make meaningful lasting changes that address gender inequities by hiring more women at all levels to create a virtuous cycle. When companies become more attuned to the needs of their female employees, they can improve workplace culture while lowering attrition. Greater diversity does lead to better outcomes, more innovation, less groupthink, better stock performance, and higher GDP growth…just look at how well the performance of public companies with female CEOs are doing. What does meaningful and sustained change look like? Dedicated resources, clear goals, comprehensive analytics, and companywide transparency while supporting women publicly.
Please share your personal experiences and opinions on this topic. Do you agree we are in a movement?
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