We seem to be approaching a synthesis on the issue of women taking on leadership roles. Rather than he issue being seen entirely through the lens of sexual polemics or political correctness, there is rising realization that having a balance of men and women on boards delivers better results to shareholders. Recent research from US universities, comprising an in-depth study of over 520 companies1, concludes "Companies with more women board members outperform those with least by 53%".
Roger Carr, chairman of UK listed Companies, Centrica and Cadbury, was quoted in the Guardian newspaper this week stating: "Women win board positions on merit but add value to the role with a different mindset, a different skill-set and a different style. Boards are intellectually and socially enriched by the presence of women and are consistently more effective through balanced judgment and opinion in decision-making."
The key conceptual shift here is inclusion, rather than just diversity. In the politically correct world of the 1990s we got bogged down with diversity, which descended into more of a statistical compliance activity. This also stigmatized women as a minority (which their not). Inclusion suggests an active seeking of other peoples point of view. It suggests that small circle decision-making is innately risky.
With this in mind, in many European countries there seems to be concerted effort to increase board representation for women, albeit from a low base. In London, a Women For Boards initiative has been launched with the sponsorship of BP. In Norway and Finland, a quota system has been introduced, but this remains controversial. New legislation is being introduced into Austria to encourage more representation of women (Edit: I'm still studying this).
But progress is "glacially" slow according to the European Professional Women's Network. A survey by Egon Zhender on their behalf estimates the total number of board seats held by women on the top 300 European companies as just 10%, up from 8% in 2004. But movement there is.
According to my own research, the situation in Poland is actually deteriorating. When I conducted research in 2009, the overall average female representation on boards was 8.5%. However, the
re has been an actual decline so that now only 13 women are represented in 240 board positions (5.7%) on the twenty largest companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
By comparison, the similar figure on the Prague Stock Exchange is around 8%.
So the position today is a mixed picture, where the current reality shows some slow movement from a low base. But, there is a clear shift of attitude. No one can rationally say that a representation of 10% is either fair or in the best interests of shareholders.
This new awareness is timely, but much work needs to be done.
Reading books such as "A Collossal Failure of Common Sense", recounting the failure of Lehman Brothers and the classic book and movie, Smartest Guys in the Room, detailing the Enron disaster, one can only conclude that the very masculinity of these companies was their strategic weakness. Overly ambitious, unable to properly assess risk, unable to listen to feedback and unwilling to recognize obvious indications of failure were all characteristically male behaviors present in these familiar sagas of corporate excess and collapse. Its not that all men are like Fuld and Skilling, its just that too many of us are.
However, biology has provided the perfect answer: Women.
And, shareholders burned in the last two years should now be aware of this.
It is not sufficient to have just token representation of women. They tend to be either excluded by the male caucus or, as in the case of Carly Fiorina at HP, can behave in a more aggressive and competitive fashion than men. The prospect of having to conform to male stereotypes is one reason why so many women bail out before they even get considered for Board roles.
So, its not just about having more women on boards. Its about allowing the women that are represented to be who they are - women. This means actively encouraging feminine characteristics, such as empathy and intuition, to be more acknowledged as leadership behaviors.
A CEO who is both successful and is breaking the mould is Indra Nooyi, taking Pepsi into health foods and stressing the company's global and ethical responsibilities. Interestingly, She has been described by former CEO Reinemund as "a deeply caring person who can relate to people from the boardroom to the front line."
One reason why so many (male) Chairman cling on to the lag-argument - there just too few women available now - is that leadership competencies are defined too narrowly. If big business continues to emphasize competitiveness over collaboration; aggressive risk-taking over prudence, self assertion over influencing, then it will be mainly men that will fill the talent pool. If we start to value people who can empathize with customers, coach top talent and nurture the values of the organization, then more women will start to get noticed.
Again, research helps here. We know that competitive differentiation in periods of low growth is gained by customer loyalty. You need to make sure your clients are not enticed away by discounters. The key to loyalty is customer empathy. The ability to see the world from the customers point of view is not customer service biz-speak. It is crucial behavioral trait you need in leaders in order to get your product, positioning and price right. As US consulting firm Katzenbach pointed out in a recent study, front line staff learn empathy from leaders.
Which gender has naturally higher levels and easier access to empathy? Not men.
The book The Female Brain2, by Louann Brizendine MD, neatly summarizes the brain scanning research showing that women naturally have the capacity to mirror the feelings of others. As a generalization, Women experience feelings of others more immediately and directly via the brains limbic system. With feelings aroused within them, women observe small changes in non-verbal clues more closely. This is probably socio-biogical. In stone age times, women had to quickly discern friend or foe. Men often rationalize through their neo-cortex first before accessing their limbic zone. This probably is connected with the need to strategize in tribal conflict. Men needed to first calculate the odds of any attack or defence strategy, and the outcome of this rationalization would influence their emotions.
The significance of this biological perspective to business becomes clear if we consider Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA., Albert Mehrabian findings which showed that in determining the meaning of any "like or dislike" message, we assign only 7% weighting to the verbal content. We give a full 55% of weighting to facial expression.
Therefore, women have a natural in-built advantage in non verbal and empathetic communication. Women are better at reading the true intentions of the other person.
But there is important difference that makes the case for greater board representation of women. Women to act on values more often than men.
Do you remember back to 2002 when Fortune carried the headline:
"THE WHISTLE-BLOWERS:
Cynthia Cooper, WorldCom; Coleen Rowley, the FBI; and Sherron Wat
kins, Enron
They took huge professional and personal risks to blow the whistle on what went wrong at WorldCom, Enron and the FBI—and in so doing helped remind us what American courage and American values are all about".
Time Magazine, Persons of the Year 2002.
In the cases of Worldcom and Enron, it was women who blew the whistle on false accounting practices. They often showed courage and tenacity in the face of male aggression and condescension. They held acted on their values - a female characteristic.
When Fortune Journalist Bethany McLean confronted the Enron COO Jeffrey Skilling, she did so by asking a naeive question "How do you make money?" Through his bluster and rage he gave the game away. It would probably have been a women who asked this (empathetic) question. Guys on the street, from analysts to auditors were still trying to show how smart they were by understanding the Enron accounts. Humility, empathy and the courage to act on values are powerful tools of leadership if we choose to recognize them as such.
Where was our Cynthia, Coleen and Sherron in 2007-8?
A final balancing remark here. I have referred to men as analytics and women as empathizers. This is of course a gross simplification. I believe most men and most women are similar most of the time, and can do pretty much the same things. However, over time there are inbuilt traits that we can notice and measure. And these become important at critical moments, when we default to our instinctive behavior. Research by Oxford Psychological Press3 in 2001, using the MBTI instrument, provides clear data that the personality traits of men and women differ and that certain traits appear more frequently in one gender than in another. Men show a greater frequency of introversion, pattern recognition, assertion, reasoning and being systematic. Women show a greater frequency for extroversion, imagination, empathy, living values and flexibility.
These are tendencies and not absolutes. Men can be empathetic; and women can be assertive. I coach many men who are uncomfortable filling the competitive macho stereotypes expected of them. I coach women who enjoy being powerful and are quite able to assert themselves. But for me, this simply reinforces the case for a balance of gender on Boards.
Women do have greater access to personality traits which have been underweighted in business to date. These traits will be much needed in future if we are to restore credibility to our values and re-connect with a younger more sceptical generation of employees and consumers. We need to move beyond the polemics and good/bad paradigm, and start to recognize that nature provided us with two genders for a purpose.
Through executive development, career management, mentoring and coaching, there are things that can be done to accelerate this change. The development focus needs to be widened however to include all those of either gender who find inclusion difficult. Under-representation might be a problem for women, but it is not exclusively a problem of women. Recognizing feminine values as part of a leadership paradigm is probably the most important change that has to take place, otherwise most women will simply not want a seat at the table.
©Andrew Atter
Roger Carr, chairman of UK listed Companies, Centrica and Cadbury, was quoted in the Guardian newspaper this week stating: "Women win board positions on merit but add value to the role with a different mindset, a different skill-set and a different style. Boards are intellectually and socially enriched by the presence of women and are consistently more effective through balanced judgment and opinion in decision-making."
The key conceptual shift here is inclusion, rather than just diversity. In the politically correct world of the 1990s we got bogged down with diversity, which descended into more of a statistical compliance activity. This also stigmatized women as a minority (which their not). Inclusion suggests an active seeking of other peoples point of view. It suggests that small circle decision-making is innately risky.
With this in mind, in many European countries there seems to be concerted effort to increase board representation for women, albeit from a low base. In London, a Women For Boards initiative has been launched with the sponsorship of BP. In Norway and Finland, a quota system has been introduced, but this remains controversial. New legislation is being introduced into Austria to encourage more representation of women (Edit: I'm still studying this).
But progress is "glacially" slow according to the European Professional Women's Network. A survey by Egon Zhender on their behalf estimates the total number of board seats held by women on the top 300 European companies as just 10%, up from 8% in 2004. But movement there is.
According to my own research, the situation in Poland is actually deteriorating. When I conducted research in 2009, the overall average female representation on boards was 8.5%. However, the
re has been an actual decline so that now only 13 women are represented in 240 board positions (5.7%) on the twenty largest companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.By comparison, the similar figure on the Prague Stock Exchange is around 8%.
So the position today is a mixed picture, where the current reality shows some slow movement from a low base. But, there is a clear shift of attitude. No one can rationally say that a representation of 10% is either fair or in the best interests of shareholders.
This new awareness is timely, but much work needs to be done.
Reading books such as "A Collossal Failure of Common Sense", recounting the failure of Lehman Brothers and the classic book and movie, Smartest Guys in the Room, detailing the Enron disaster, one can only conclude that the very masculinity of these companies was their strategic weakness. Overly ambitious, unable to properly assess risk, unable to listen to feedback and unwilling to recognize obvious indications of failure were all characteristically male behaviors present in these familiar sagas of corporate excess and collapse. Its not that all men are like Fuld and Skilling, its just that too many of us are.
However, biology has provided the perfect answer: Women.
And, shareholders burned in the last two years should now be aware of this.
It is not sufficient to have just token representation of women. They tend to be either excluded by the male caucus or, as in the case of Carly Fiorina at HP, can behave in a more aggressive and competitive fashion than men. The prospect of having to conform to male stereotypes is one reason why so many women bail out before they even get considered for Board roles.
So, its not just about having more women on boards. Its about allowing the women that are represented to be who they are - women. This means actively encouraging feminine characteristics, such as empathy and intuition, to be more acknowledged as leadership behaviors.
A CEO who is both successful and is breaking the mould is Indra Nooyi, taking Pepsi into health foods and stressing the company's global and ethical responsibilities. Interestingly, She has been described by former CEO Reinemund as "a deeply caring person who can relate to people from the boardroom to the front line."
One reason why so many (male) Chairman cling on to the lag-argument - there just too few women available now - is that leadership competencies are defined too narrowly. If big business continues to emphasize competitiveness over collaboration; aggressive risk-taking over prudence, self assertion over influencing, then it will be mainly men that will fill the talent pool. If we start to value people who can empathize with customers, coach top talent and nurture the values of the organization, then more women will start to get noticed.
Again, research helps here. We know that competitive differentiation in periods of low growth is gained by customer loyalty. You need to make sure your clients are not enticed away by discounters. The key to loyalty is customer empathy. The ability to see the world from the customers point of view is not customer service biz-speak. It is crucial behavioral trait you need in leaders in order to get your product, positioning and price right. As US consulting firm Katzenbach pointed out in a recent study, front line staff learn empathy from leaders.
Which gender has naturally higher levels and easier access to empathy? Not men.
The book The Female Brain2, by Louann Brizendine MD, neatly summarizes the brain scanning research showing that women naturally have the capacity to mirror the feelings of others. As a generalization, Women experience feelings of others more immediately and directly via the brains limbic system. With feelings aroused within them, women observe small changes in non-verbal clues more closely. This is probably socio-biogical. In stone age times, women had to quickly discern friend or foe. Men often rationalize through their neo-cortex first before accessing their limbic zone. This probably is connected with the need to strategize in tribal conflict. Men needed to first calculate the odds of any attack or defence strategy, and the outcome of this rationalization would influence their emotions.
The significance of this biological perspective to business becomes clear if we consider Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UCLA., Albert Mehrabian findings which showed that in determining the meaning of any "like or dislike" message, we assign only 7% weighting to the verbal content. We give a full 55% of weighting to facial expression.
Therefore, women have a natural in-built advantage in non verbal and empathetic communication. Women are better at reading the true intentions of the other person.
But there is important difference that makes the case for greater board representation of women. Women to act on values more often than men.
Do you remember back to 2002 when Fortune carried the headline:
"THE WHISTLE-BLOWERS:
Cynthia Cooper, WorldCom; Coleen Rowley, the FBI; and Sherron Wat
kins, EnronThey took huge professional and personal risks to blow the whistle on what went wrong at WorldCom, Enron and the FBI—and in so doing helped remind us what American courage and American values are all about".
Time Magazine, Persons of the Year 2002.
In the cases of Worldcom and Enron, it was women who blew the whistle on false accounting practices. They often showed courage and tenacity in the face of male aggression and condescension. They held acted on their values - a female characteristic.
When Fortune Journalist Bethany McLean confronted the Enron COO Jeffrey Skilling, she did so by asking a naeive question "How do you make money?" Through his bluster and rage he gave the game away. It would probably have been a women who asked this (empathetic) question. Guys on the street, from analysts to auditors were still trying to show how smart they were by understanding the Enron accounts. Humility, empathy and the courage to act on values are powerful tools of leadership if we choose to recognize them as such.
Where was our Cynthia, Coleen and Sherron in 2007-8?
A final balancing remark here. I have referred to men as analytics and women as empathizers. This is of course a gross simplification. I believe most men and most women are similar most of the time, and can do pretty much the same things. However, over time there are inbuilt traits that we can notice and measure. And these become important at critical moments, when we default to our instinctive behavior. Research by Oxford Psychological Press3 in 2001, using the MBTI instrument, provides clear data that the personality traits of men and women differ and that certain traits appear more frequently in one gender than in another. Men show a greater frequency of introversion, pattern recognition, assertion, reasoning and being systematic. Women show a greater frequency for extroversion, imagination, empathy, living values and flexibility.
These are tendencies and not absolutes. Men can be empathetic; and women can be assertive. I coach many men who are uncomfortable filling the competitive macho stereotypes expected of them. I coach women who enjoy being powerful and are quite able to assert themselves. But for me, this simply reinforces the case for a balance of gender on Boards.
Women do have greater access to personality traits which have been underweighted in business to date. These traits will be much needed in future if we are to restore credibility to our values and re-connect with a younger more sceptical generation of employees and consumers. We need to move beyond the polemics and good/bad paradigm, and start to recognize that nature provided us with two genders for a purpose.
Through executive development, career management, mentoring and coaching, there are things that can be done to accelerate this change. The development focus needs to be widened however to include all those of either gender who find inclusion difficult. Under-representation might be a problem for women, but it is not exclusively a problem of women. Recognizing feminine values as part of a leadership paradigm is probably the most important change that has to take place, otherwise most women will simply not want a seat at the table.
©Andrew Atter
1.Catalyst, 2007: The Bottom Line: Corporate Performance and Women's Representation on Boards.
2.The Female Brain, Louann Brizendine, MD, 2006
3.Oxford Psychological Press, 2001
Other useful sources:
HBR, 2007: Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership, Alice H. Eagly and Linda L. Carli
HBR, 2002: Executive Women and the myth of having it all; Sylvia A Hewlett
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