Women In the Power Mix

• Collaboration and inclusion
• Teamwork
• More authenticity and transparency
• Building a culture the fosters creativity and innovation
• Coaching and mentoring high potentials
• Showing concern for how the organization impacts the community surrounding it

Yet even more impressive is that I have found women also have a strong drive to succeed and more importantly have the ability to achieve great results for their organizations.  This is not to say that women leaders have no Achilles Heels – they do and I will discuss three major ones a bit later.  That being said, my overall experience has been that women are more willing to acknowledge and accept their short comings which allows them to grow faster and increase impact faster than their male counter parts.  For the most part, they are stellar at taking in feedback.  It would be interesting to see a study on ROI with women versus men who leverage executive coaching.  My guess would be that while both would see strong growth – women may have the edge because they are more naturally open to the learning process.

As more women enter the work force and prove their meddle – they are also transforming the work place. Women business executives with families are dogged about protecting their family time.  On top of this they seem to have the ability to manage their work load so that they can make it to their kids softball game, to be home in time to make dinner, to be there if their kid calls, etc. Many organizations and most male executives have a challenging time appreciating the flexibility that many women executives require for job fulfuillment.  Even when a woman is clearly one of the best producers – men seem to wonder why they are leaving work at 3:30 to attend to family needs.  In short, high powered women executives with families have two jobs yet they have the ability to attend to both with a high level of quality.  Let’s take a look at some powerful statistics.

In Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success published recently, Claire Shipman and Katty Kay, ¹ provide some very compelling research.  For example, did you know that:

• Women’ representation in the senior ranks of Fortune 500 companies grew from 10 percent in 1996 to 16 percent in 2002 ²
• 57% of women in the US hold a bachelors degree, account for over 58% of all those receiving graduate degrees and will soon be in the majority over men in the workforce (current women hold 46% of all positions). ³
• At the University of California at Davis, the graduate school of management concluded in 2005 that companies with women in top leadership positions have stronger relationships with customers and shareholders and a more diverse and profitable business.⁴
• In Norway the government has become so convinced of the value of women in business that the minister of trade has demanded that 40 percent of any company board be women‚ not to appear politically correct, but to make their firms more competitive internationally.⁵

Strong Leadership = Powerful Results!

If you really get your arms around  all of this, it quickly dawns on you that:

1. It is essential to be consciously focusing on the development of stronger leadership in organizations through hiring and active development strategies.
2. If you have a pool of talented highly educated women available who naturally embody key leadership competencies then it makes sense to leverage this and promote women to senior positions – especially if you want to add velocity to strengthening your leadership culture.

All of this points to the value of diversity and hopefully moves us away from trying to strike a balance by using quotas and recognizing how diversity strengthens our ability to be profitable and high performing.  On top of this, everyone has to start to realize that women’s efforts to create greater flexibility in the work force has generated something positive for both men and women.  For example, I have had a number of male clients who have taken time off of work when a child is born – taking advantage of new policies supporting maternity leave.  Similarly, men have greater latitude to attend events their children participate in and have the ability to leave work early to take care of a sick child.

What Women Must Learn

While many women have natural leadership instincts – there are at least three development areas that they must examine – these areas can be boiled down to:

• Generating greater confidence
• Not sweating the small stuff
• Reduce the drama

Again, these are generalities and like men – each individual woman will have their unique development journey.  That being said – let’s briefly take a look at each of the items mentioned above.

Achieving Greater Confidence:

Because many women are relational they tend to be concerned about how others are viewing a problem and can see great value in taking into account another’s opinions when making decisions. This is certainly a strength.  The problem comes in when women begin to discount their inner power and natural abilities when it seems others are taking actions that seem to undermine their own sense of value.  Many of my woman clients, and all the rest of us, tend to desire validation from the outside and create rules that this validation must exist for them to be confident.  Yet, ultimately, confidence is controlled by us – not through another’s opinions.   It is an inside out experience that collapses when we start using external opinions as the main basis for validation.  This is a central learning territory for most women.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

I have found that women, like all of us, can get stuck in small issues.  For example, they might fixate on a particular interaction and how they felt leaving that interaction losing site of the purpose of that relationship and the results they are trying to generate with the other person.  At the extreme, this can be perceived as “petty” and hurt their image.  The key to overcoming this is to hold laser focus on key priorities and engage others around the most important outcomes they are aiming to achieve.  This is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater either.  There are times when others are rude, insensitive or just plainly ineffective in an interaction.  The key is to bring this up in the context of the outcomes that are found mutually valuable and provide feedback that the approach they took to the interaction gets in the way of achieving those results.

Reduce the Drama

This trap door builds a bit off the last one.  And again, this can be an issue faced by both men and women.  Reducing drama is not about cutting off emotions.  One of the great things the growing population of women in organizations brings is emotional intelligence.  Yet, when we become overly dramatic when addressing an issue – it takes away from a woman’s impact.  Again, the key is to remain focused – on your personal purpose and vision for impact as well as the key priorities you are accountable for attending to.  Also, taking up something that helps center you whether it be meditation, Hatha Yoga, Thai Chi or some other proven method for finding focus can assist in smoothing out any habit to generate drama.

Certainly the items mentioned above can reduce a female executives power yet no matter how ineffective a strategy or habit is – all of us develop them for some reason.  Yet all habits have a shelf life based on the time in life we developed them.  This is a key understanding in development – how to let go of old habits that no longer have the same effectiveness.  The good news is that I find when a trusting environment is built in the coaching relationship – most women are more than wiling to acknowledge if one of these is getting in her way.

As I have mentioned before – a key to competitive advantage in today’s global market place is enhancing leadership.  Today organizations have a rich pool of talented women leaders ready to answer the call and help your organization move forward towards greater success.

Additional Resource LInks:

• More research on “Womanomics” by Cristian Dezső is assistant professor in the Logistics, Business and Public Policy department at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland.
• Harvard Business Review – Women in Business Series
• Top 10 Companies for Executive Women
• Fast Company Magazine – The Most Influential Women In Technology
• National Association of Female Executives
• Network of Executive Women
• Executive Women – LinkedIn Group
• Women in The Professional Services Industry – LinkedIn Group
  
• The Multinational Development of Women in Technology
• American Society of Women in Accounting