To Allow Women to be Leaders, We Need to Change the Culture
It would be hard to argue that there has ever been a better time to be a professional woman, but despite making up close to 50% of America’s workforce, women are still very under-represented in executive roles (just 5.2% of Forbes 500 CEOs are women). Smart companies that understand the value of diversity and well-read hiring managers know that female-led companies are often more productive and financially stable. Yet women continue to be a scarcity in boardrooms and corner offices around the country. Visionaries like Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, and scholars like Harvard’s Dr. Hermina Ibarra posit that the lack of female leadership has less to do with the paths available to the modern woman, and results more from the context in which these women are expected to learn to lead.
Build a Pipeline or Grow a Garden?
The term ‘pipeline’ is a common one, but the metaphor feels insufficient when it comes to the career paths of our future female executives. The phrase implies a kind of rushed action and more importantly one that occurs in insulation, unaffected by factors outside of the pipe. The most damning weakness of the ‘pipeline,’ however, is that the image gives us no notion of metamorphosis – when something moves through a pipe line, literal or figurative, it comes out the other end in a new location, but is otherwise unchanged. This is problematic when we consider that the solution to gender inequality in executive roles is not just to create opportunities for women to lead, but also to cultivate and nurture leadership qualities in women as they advance through the work force. Programs like Harvard’s Women’s Leadership Forum, the Smith-Tuck Global Leaders Program at Dartmouth, and Barnard’s Athena Leadership Lab encourage female leaders by focusing on industrial, organizational, and individual transformation. Students also have access to mixed gender courses such as Columbia University’s Organizational Psychology and Leadership programs.
Transformation being the key word and idea – that while the corporate culture and structure must continue changing to facilitate female leadership, so too must the future leader herself. Ibarra writes that, “the subtle gender bias that persists in organizations and society disrupts the learning cycle at the heart of becoming a leader.” Her conclusion reminds us that leadership is a craft, a learned skill rather than an innate ability.
Beyond Leadership Programs
Leadership programs and initiatives must be coupled with a change in the context within which women learn to lead – otherwise the efforts, noble as they may be, are played out without enough consideration of the social reality. Ibarra goes on to say that, “The context must support a woman’s motivation to lead and also increase the likelihood that others will recognize and encourage her efforts.” The proverbial pipeline lacks context and is ignorant of the social pressures and prejudices beyond. Perhaps a garden then, is a more apt metaphor to describe the pursuit of equality in the C-suite. It reminds us that leaders need to be groomed and cultivated, and that the women who will drive the percentage of female CEOs on the Forbes 500 from 5.2% to 50% will have been grown from the ground up in an encouraging context. Like any crop, these leaders will need fertilizer and according to several studies and interviews with female executives, one form of this will come in the form of networking and seeking out mentors and sponsors as early as possible.
A 2011 study by Kennesaw State University, in which twelve female executives were interviewed about their career paths, revealed a consensus among the interviewees that a critical component of female leadership development is establishing a network and community of like-minded peers. That may seem obvious, but as Sheryl Sandberg reminded readers in a recent interview, “Success and likability are . . . negatively correlated for women. Which means that as women get more successful, they are liked less.” Sandberg is describing a contextual problem, indicative of an environment that discourages the cycle of learning all competent leaders must go through. Companies and aspiring female leaders alike must be aware of these contextual limitations and work towards creating an environment that encourages a diverse leadership all the way from top to bottom.
Awareness is the first step
An awareness of the context is an important first step, but our current and future female leaders need to understand the tangible ways they can affect their careers before leadership equality is realized. Sandberg stresses the importance of mentorship in her interview, and reminds readers that a mentor/mentee dynamic is neither clinical nor contractual, but successful mentorships revolve around building a relationship. A good mentorship takes time and develops like any good relationship, with respect, care for one another and shared goals and beliefs. Gallup, in a 2014 study that looked at what factors of an individual’s college experience had the biggest affect on their future engagement and success at work, found that for students who had, “…a professor who cared about them as a person, made them excited about learning, and encouraged them to pursue their dreams, their odds of being engaged at work more than doubled.”
If finding a mentor is a positive and important part of developing female leaders, how can women who aspire to leadership develop these important relationships? Sandberg believes that, “We need to explicitly encourage men to sponsor women,” and goes on to say that, “…mentorship is all about being alone with a person and talking one-on-one, and we need to encourage that.” While her analysis is insightful, Sandberg only touches on half of the mentorship equation. We cannot expect our CEOs and board chairmen and women to keep their eyes constantly peeled, forever surveying their employees trying to pick out tomorrow’s leaders. Barring any kind of Good Will Hunting scenario, where one comes upon a mentor essentially by happenstance – most mentors are sought out by people looking for guidance. To effectively engineer a system and culture where female leaders are encouraged to realize their potential and seize their due share of the C-suite, professionals with the capacity and appropriate background to become mentors need to be hyperaware of how powerful their mentorship can be, and aspirational women need to focus some of their energy on identifying and reaching out to potential mentors.
Changing the terminology we use to describe the ascent of an employee to a leader is an important step, but any evolution of vocabulary is useless if it is not married to a parallel action. The women who take over the corner offices in the future will have been cultivated and groomed, not shuttled along a pipeline. They will have enjoyed fruitful relationships with mentors, both male and female, and most will have found those mentors by identifying their goals and reaching out to leaders they admire and whose guidance they seek.
By John Marshall
