Tag Archive for: Aimee Hansen

Why Real Progress Doesn’t Have a Face

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woman typing on a laptopWhen it comes to women in top executive positions, nothing causes more upheaval than the threat of quotas that could push more women in. But the real threat is the quota that is already in place and not talked about – the quota that allows one woman in but is locking women in general out.

A new study by Cristian Dezső from the Robert H. Smith School of Business and two co-authors David Gaddis Ross and Jose Uribe from Columbia Business School found evidence of a hidden quota at work at the top inside of companies:

If a woman holds one of the top five executive positions at a company, the chances of a second woman joining the top executive ranks falls by 51%.

The culprit behind this hidden quota? The study, to be published in the Strategic Management Journal, could not discern whether this was conscious discrimination or unconscious bias at play. What’s clear however, is the outcome.

Lone Woman Up a Ladder

The researchers looked at the top five executive roles by compensation across 1,500 S&P firms over twenty years from 1991 to 2011, where top management positions held by women rose from 1.6% in 1992 to 5.8% in 2000 to a slower yet incline of 8.7% in 2011.

The authors found that when one woman had been promoted to the top executive ranks, she was not a key opening up executive offices for more women but more like a lock on the door.

The report states that “women in top management face an implicit quota, whereby a firm’s leadership makes an effort to have a small number of women on the top management team but makes less effort to have, or even resists having, larger numbers of women.”

The study conducted a simulated distribution analysis and compared it to actual distribution of top company executives. If one female executive opened the path for more, there would be lots of clustering. If she had no impact on other female appointments, there would be random distribution. Nope, neither were true.

What the researchers found was a “negative spillover” – the actual distribution of female top executives was isolated, repelling one another. In other words, most companies had only one, resulting in a fragmented female executive population.

As co-author Ross shared with The Huffington Post, “It’s like someone really carefully went around and put one woman on one top management team, and another woman on another, and another woman on another.”

Dezső implies that one woman leads to a pat on the back and now let’s all move on. “Once they had appointed one woman, the men seem to have said, ‘We have done our job.’”

Left of Power Center

The research also implies that the quota seems to not only to limit numbers of women, but their influence – because many companies satisfy the hidden quota by promoting a woman to a professional position, such as head of human resources, rather than (or to keep them out of) a line position. 47% of first-time CEOS came from a line position in the survey, whereas only 4% came from a professional position.

The researchers noted, “The strongest spillovers are associated with professional positions, which are generally more supporting, lower in status, and less integral to a firm’s operations than line officer or CEO positions. We argue that a firm’s managers have greater latitude to use professional positions to satisfy an implicit quota on women in top management.”

Lower Return on Gender Equality Investment?

The study found that efforts to promote women into executive roles after one woman was in place become lower or even in opposition. Getting the second women promoted into the top ranks is a far more challenging feat than the first.

Observing company dynamics, Ross told Business Insider that after one appointment, “They orient their efforts away from promoting women, perhaps to the point of resistance.”

The authors speculate that this could be down to “diminishing returns” for companies on the gender equality scoreboard. While companies gain legitimacy, media, and a representative “face” for change when one woman is hired into a top executive position – and even hold an advantage to peer companieswho have zero -the marginal “value” declines with additional hires, while the cost to the status quo becomes higher.

One woman is enough to stave off internal and external pressure for gender equality but not enough for real change. Stopping at hiring one woman into a top executive position is kind of like crossing the starting line, but then prematurely taking a break to rest securely upon your laurels.

No, It’s Not Queen Bee Syndrome

Maybe those queen bee women are keeping other women out, protecting their coveted positions of power by pushing other women down? No.

The researchers found that the lowest negative spillovers actually occurred in companies with a woman CEO – a female CEO went some way towards mitigating the implicit quota. If a woman CEO was in place, there was a greater chance of further female top executive presence.

Maybe it’s about time that we stop suspecting the lone woman on the ladder in the crowd of men as the one that’s rigging the rungs.

Protected Territory At the Top

Many studies have shown that women create a positive spill-over for each other, such as decreased discrimination and increased pay, at other management levels.

“However,” the researchers state, “we obtained qualitatively different results among top managers, perhaps because men’s willingness to work towards the betterment of women within their organizations is lower in top management, where each job is so valuable both to the individual who holds it and to the dominant male coalition inside the organization.”

At the top it would seem, male managers are protecting the most valuable turf.

We Must Disassociate “One” With Progress

Gender diversity isn’t about show. It’s about change and influence – and as long as changes are made to show gender diversity, they won’t really be made for gender diversity.

It’s well-documented that women in top management bring serious benefits to organizations. It’s well-documented that real progress happens when gender diversity goes beyond tokenism to meet a critical mass.

Whether a board member, an investor, or any champion for diversity within a company, Dezső advises that when you see one woman at the top, it’s best to “keep up the pressure or even apply more pressure” to avoid a plateau.

Today women in top executive positions remain an isolated and fragmented minority. One women among top executives is not a sign of real progress at a systemic level. She’s a sign of more work to be done, and if not recognized as such, a decoy for the changes that aren’t being made.

Real progress doesn’t have a face. It has so many that no one person becomes exemplary of it.

By Aimee Hansen

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What’s keeping white male leaders from leading Diversity & Inclusion efforts?

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Nervous Business WomanDo you hear what I hear? The call for men, and particularly white men, to join in on gender equality and diversity efforts is not only echoing loudly, it’s piling up into a chorus.

White male leaders are being not only invited, but implored to join the case for diversity and inclusion. The predominant argument is not just that diversity advocates want white male leaders to join in, it’s that the success of diversity efforts could be greatly enhanced by their participation due to their continued formal and informal positions of power and authority within companies.

With men holding over 82% of board positions in Fortune 1000 companies, and a significant number of those men being white, their participation in Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) efforts has been proposed as “Creating a New Normal” in the Huffington Post.

So with the invitation in their hands, what keeps white male leaders holding back on their RSVP to diversity and inclusion?

With all of our editorial focus on engaging white men, we thought it useful to take a step back and remind ourselves of the barriers we must navigate in doing so.

Challenges to Engaging White Men

As Chuck Shelton, Chief Executive Officer at Greatheart Leader Labs and moderator of the recent event that theglasshammer.com held on the topic has said, “No business strategy, including D&I, will deliver optimal results when many with position power (white men, in this discussion) disconnect from the strategy.”

The landmark study to date on engaging white men in diversity & inclusion efforts remains his organization’s “White Men’s Leadership Study” which pointed out that white men are less likely to be engaged in diversity and inclusion initiatives at companies.

White male leaders hold both the purse strings when it comes to D&I programs and the social influence necessary to make these programs work. Authors Shelton and Thomas noted that white men are “a significantly underperforming asset in every company’s global D&I investment portfolio.”
The report identified many dynamics into why while male leaders remain both an underperforming – and perhaps undervalued – asset in the movement for diversity and inclusion.

Feeling Excluded

You can’t RSVP to a party you don’t feel invited to. Just a couple years ago, the biggest factor revealed in the study was that white men did not feel included in Diversity & Inclusion. Nearly 70% of white male respondents agreed with the statement, “It is still not clear diversity initiatives are meant to include white men.” 60% of women and minority leaders agreed, too.

This was not limited to a perception among white male leaders. Women and minority leaders didn’t necessarily see the value of including white men in inclusion and diversity programs. “Leaders who are not white and male may quietly doubt that white male inclusion will open doors for them,” the WLMS report said. But when Diversity & Inclusion efforts don’t actively engage white men, they are prone to exclude them.

When women and minority leaders shoulder D&I initiatives, and those initiatives are not seen as owned by all and in everybody’s interest, it creates counter-dynamics. A study published by the Academy of Management illustrated that diversity-efforts on the behalf of women and minorities can be negatively viewed as scheming and (social group) self-serving. The researchers reported, “Ethnic minority or female leaders who engage in diversity-valuing behavior are penalized with worse performance ratings than their equally diversity-valuing white or male counterparts,” which only reinforces the glass ceiling. The research also points out the paradox that for white men “valuing diversity gave a significant boost to ratings for warmth and performance.”

The authors of Gender in Organizations: Are Men Allies or Adversaries to Women’s Career Advancement write, “By excluding men from the focus and development of strategies to attentuate gender disparities, businesses are missing an opportunity to effect change.”

Being protective about diversity and inclusion doesn’t ultimately advance its interests, and engaging white men – who might not feel invited by default – cannot be a passive exercise. It must be an active effort.

Being Skeptical

Another of the biggest challenges identified was skepticism on behalf of white men on the value of diversity and inclusion programs, as well as the suspicion that some people may receive jobs or promotions that they are unqualified for through these programs. The WMLS researchers explained, “Progress is stifled by the perceived tension between the qualifications of diverse employees and the organizational commitment to diversity.”

Another form skepticism took was deflection of relevance. Some white, male respondents seemed irritated to be part of a study on race and gender, and responded with what the report authors called “deflective comments”, such as asserting the questions were unfair or that race and gender doesn’t matter these days. Shelton and Thomas wrote, “We need to recognize deflections, and respond to such viewpoints through honest, straightforward dialogue.”

While prejudice is something you can put your finger on, unconscious bias often is not. Becoming aware of the unconscious bias in each of us, and how it’s at play in the workplace, for example through stereotype threat, helps to reaffirm the importance of D&I efforts.

Also male leaders who are trailblazing in diversity and inclusion have repeatedly advised that to engage men in leadership positions with the value of D&I programs, focus on measurable results (and measuring results) of diversity efforts such as impact on the bottom line and driving innovation in the workplace.

Having Perception & Communication Gaps

A third major factor in struggling to engage white male leaders was that they already perceived themselves to be effective at diversity and inclusion…way more than their peers did.

White men were twice (45%) as likely as women and minorities (21%) to view white male leaders as effective in the areas of diversity and inclusion. The perception gap extended to white men’s effectiveness at coaching and improving the performance of diverse employees (33 points gap); building strong, diverse teams (36 points); promoting diverse talent on merit (36 points); and including diverse voices in decision making (40 points.)

While perception is subjective, statistics showing underrepresentation of diversity are not. The authors suggested that with such a disparity in perception around effectiveness, conversation requires “care and focus,” in which some conflict is to be naturally expected and handled.

“Candor among peers and co-workers is a very important element to this whole process,” said Shelton. “Real diversity and inclusion requires care and ensuring everyone feels that they are part of the effort, including white male leaders.” They noted, “Findings in this research build the case for conversations of care and candor, as we seek to engage and equip white men to integrate diversity and inclusion more effectively into their leadership work.”

Invitation & Opportunity

With the invitation to men being extended on more fronts, as far as the United Nations, perhaps exclusion is becoming less of a barrier for engaging men – perhaps now, the invitation is clear.

Speaking recently with Shelton, he shared, “We’re seeing a lot of organizations in which male leaders are up for ally development. The real measure will be when more men are actually active and accountable as allies and sponsors.”

Equally important is how we co-host the party with men. When we sit together at the table of diversity, we’ll be more likely to evoke change if all parties feel involved and invested in the process, the potential, and the outcome.

By Aimee Hansen

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Office Housework: Lean In, But Don’t Be Leaned On

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working from homeIf you make well-meaning, generous, happy to help contributions day in and out at the office and it goes without recognition or reward, do you make a sound? When it comes to your career, probably not. The truth is when it comes to both moving up and looking after yourself, too much helping might be hurting.

In a recent New York Times article, Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant write, “This is the sad reality in workplaces around the world: Women help more but benefit less from it.” After all, there’s a difference between leaning in and being leaned on.

Why We Help

Sandberg and Grant are quick to note that gender stereotypes are at play in creating expectations for women to “pitch in” thanklessly for the team: “When a man offers to help, we shower him with praise and rewards. But when a woman helps, we feel less indebted. She’s communal, right? She wants to be a team player. The reverse is also true. When a woman declines to help a colleague, people like her less and her career suffers. But when a man says no, he faces no backlash. A man who doesn’t help is ‘busy’; a woman is ‘selfish.’”

So it’s no surprise that Law Professor Joan C. Williams, author of What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know, says that for women, “Saying no without seeming touchy, humorless or supremely selfish is a particularly tricky balancing act.” Women continue to be left “holding the mop”, in the words of Senator Elizabeth Warren, for men in the office. Blogging on leadership, Williams defines office housework as:

“the administrative tasks, menial jobs, and undervalued assignments women are disproportionately given at their jobs.”

“Someone has to take notes, serve on committees and plan meetings — and just as happens with housework at home, that someone is usually a woman,” says Sandberg and Grant.

What happens when a woman says no? A study on altruistic behavior led by NYU’s Heilman tested how male and female employees would be evaluated based on choosing whether to stay late for an important meeting. A man was rated 14% more favourably than a woman for staying and helping. A woman was 12% more negatively than a man for declining.

It’s the equivalent of the “awww” factor daddy gets but not mom when he carries around the baby, and it’s unequally rewarded. Sandberg and Grant state, “Over and over, after giving identical help, a man was significantly more likely to be recommended for promotions, important projects, raises and bonuses. A woman had to help just to get the same rating as a man who didn’t help.”

If you’re finding yourself disproportionately engaged in leading mentor programs, coordinating the interns, taking notes, heading up thankless committees and special side initiatives, ordering the sandwiches, volunteering to stay late, and spending time behind the scenes coaching, you are helping organizational success according to many studies noted in the NYT article.

But the question is at what price to your career and to yourself?

Hindering Your Career

The NYT article stated, “Studies demonstrate that men are more likely to contribute with visible behaviors — like showing up at optional meetings — while women engage more privately in time-consuming activities like assisting others and mentoring colleagues.”

Behind the scenes help is valuable, but when it’s mostly women who are carrying the time and effort commitment on low-valued, low-visibility work, who is free to step up to the high-value, high-visibility opportunities?

“The person taking diligent notes in the meeting almost never makes the killer point,” Sandberg and Grant write in the NYT. And Williams asserts in the Washington Post, “We have to get women out of office housework and onto more projects that really matter, both to them and to their companies, if we want more women to be successful in reaching positions of influence.”

Sacrificing Yourself

Williams writes, “Women are often asked to play the selfless good citizen…by taking on assignments that men don’t want or that the organization doesn’t highly reward.” But what happens when women act selfless, or out of our need to be dutiful or helpful, is we too often neglect ourselves.

Women are more likely to feel burned out at work when it comes to emotional exhaustion, according to an analysis of 183 different studies across 15 countries. According to another study, women’s focus on and involvement with others to the exclusion of taking care of their own self can cause stress and depression underneath.

Being helpful can create personally rewarding interactions, but women need to be careful that they’re not exhausting their own energy and resources while colluding with multiplying expectations upon themselves.

If your identity becomes locked up in being the helpful one, which your gender already infers, then it becomes an expectation you serve and reaffirm. When out of balance, being of service to others at the workplace can mean being of dis-service to yourself.

A Mindset Change

Sandberg and Grant suggest that organizations should chose to value, track, and recognize acts of helping, as well as address the imbalance in assigning this work. They also suggest men could step up to contribute their share and help vocalize the unsung contributions.

In the meantime, they suggest breaking free of the cycle of mop-holding comes down to women, to you: “For women, the most important change starts with a shift in mind-set: If we want to care for others, we also need to take care of ourselves. One of us, Adam, has conducted and reviewed numerous studies showing that women (and men) achieve the highest performance and experience the lowest burnout when they prioritize their own needs along with the needs of others. By putting self-concern on par with concern for others, women may feel less altruistic, but they’re able to gain more influence and sustain more energy. Ultimately, they can actually give more.”

The NYT article pointed out an exec who found more efficient ways – such as a FAQ manual – to address requests for help, as well as caring ways to decline over-stretching. Only then did she make partner. You can be as giving, caring, and considerate in how you say no to others while recognizing your needs and limits as you can be in saying yes.

Women are quick at helping, and it’s part of the path to success, but that doesn’t mean we have to shoulder all the under-valued work at a cost to ourselves.

Perhaps we need to qualify Sandberg’s call-to-action: Lean in, but don’t be leaned on.

By Aimee Hansen

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Values-Based Leadership: How It Can Improve Your Effectiveness

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Values-Based LeadershipAs a leader, do the values of your organization speak through your actions?

A recent article in The Journal of Values-Based Leadership reminds us that Steve Jobs said, “The only thing that works is management by values.” It’s no surprise that companies like Apple who foster a values-based approach in their leadership culture create connections that have a significant impact on company performance.

Your ability to focus on and motivate through core organizational values can have an impact on your effectiveness as a leader, too.

HOW FOCUSING ON ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES HELPS YOU AS A LEADER

Raises you to a leadership perspective

The Financial Times defines value-based leadership as “Motivating employees by connecting organizational goals to employees’ personal values.”

A Harvard Business School paper asserted that when leaders focus on the technical or administrative side of their work, they become too fixed on short term returns. The paper stated, “If leaders instead sought to uphold values and maintain integrity, they could establish the long-term perspective and commitment to innovation necessary for sustaining their competitive position in an increasingly global economy.”

Effective leaders keep focused on the visions and values of the organization as a compass for action. Indeed, having women in the boardroom has helped at aligning corporate action to company values. International research has shown that “the positive impact of women on the board on financial performance, and on ethical and social compliance, indirectly affects firm value.”

Also, keeping your eye set on organizational values, and above the daily tasks, may help you from getting too drawn into office housework that can be peripheral to your leadership goals.

Increases bonding with you as a leader

Building relationships with those who work with you is important, but when they’re built through a common bond around organizational values, it strengthens your position as a leader.

The ability to compellingly communication organizational values is a key attribute of leadership success. Communication research shows that optimized messages can garner a “shared sense of purpose, which is achieved when multiple employees possess the same understanding of the purpose of the work.” In particular, the combination of “a large amount of vision imagery with a small number of values” increases performance by creating a shared sense of organizational goals and coordination towards them.

Effective leaders also create a motivational sense of belonging. Leadership research shows that people feel more bonded to a leader with which they feel a “shared social identity” that is representative of their in-group. Leaders who effectively convert organizational values to a shared identity would seem able to create deeper commitment from those they manage.

In fact, values coach & author Joe Tye asserts that values-based leadership can create a culture of ownership rather than a culture of accountability, which he asserts relates to motivation, productivity, and retention.

Affirms your leadership integrity

Values are meaningless unless put into action, and the standard for integrity within an organization is set by its leaders.

Speaking to values-based leadership, Mark Fernandes, Chief Leadership Officer at Luck Companies, says “In order for these values to be authentic within the organization, it’s imperative that the leaders be fully committed to demonstrating the values in everything they do. There’s a level of inauthenticity that associates will notice and it can erode their trust in the leadership if they’re not actively seeing the behaviors exhibited in the actions and words of their leaders.”

The HBS paper asserted that by embodying the values they espouse, leaders enable employees to find meaning and value in their own work: “Members’ interactions with the organization and their actions on its behalf are not just transactional but are imbued with meaning. As members internalize the organization’s purpose, to the extent that their own actions further this purpose, they come to regard these actions as meaningful. They further view themselves as part of a valued community. They are motivated to exert effort on behalf of that community, to defend it when threatened, and to advocate on its behalf.”

Being able to connect individuals to the values of your organization is especially important when it comes to motivating Gen Y. Research has shown that for Millenials, job fulfilment hinges partially on believing in the vision and strategic direction their organization is pursuing in the world and feeling personally connected to it.

If leaders don’t uphold the values the company espouses, employees lose faith and begin to disengage. If they do, they inspire.

Ignites your potential and the potential of those around you

When your personal ambition is aligned with your company’s vision, you are more engaged, more productive and more able to reach your potential according to research. This is true not only for you, but for those you manage and motivate. When you feel corporate values are more closely aligned to your personal values, it creates intrinsic motivation.

Fernandes focuses on igniting the full potential in others, “Values-based leadership is defined by living, working and leading in alignment with your core values, principles, beliefs and purpose to, in turn, ignite the extraordinary potential in those around you.”

Values-based leadership has also been linked to creating a culture of creativity and innovation. The Journal of VBL article states, “When an individual has a personal and professional commitment to align personal values with those of the organization he or she works for, a powerful connection is created. This connection creates numerous possibilities for both individual growth and company productivity.” The article suggests that motivating a “work culture or atmosphere that sparks creativity” is increasingly a matter of customizing motivational strategies to align employee values with organizational values.

WALK THE WALK ON VALUES

So given how values-based leadership can positively impact your leadership potential, how do you begin to walk the walk? Perhaps the first question to ask yourself is what the organizational values really mean to you.

Conscious Manager recommends to, “Develop a personal understanding of your organization’s values. Think about what the company’s values really mean to you and to your unique leadership style. You need to know which of your behaviors demonstrate those values. If the business’ beliefs and principles don’t have meaning for you, you won’t be able to make them meaningful for anyone else.” Ultimately, it’s your actions, not your words that speak to how well you represent values – in being a role model, in teaching the values, and in recognizing them. “Bringing values to life is a behavioral issue.”

Embodying Values is one of five key behaviors of great leaders, says Author Ken Blanchard. He asserts, “Leaders must establish, articulate, and enforce the core values of their organization. More important, they must model the behaviors that support the values.”

He suggests leaders ask these four questions:

“How can I integrate our core organizational values into the way my team operates?”

“What are some ways I can communicate our values to my team over the next thirty days?”

“How can I create greater personal alignment with our values on a daily basis?”

“How can I recognize and reward people who actively embody the values?”

Inspiring leaders motivate us towards a common goal. Values-based may be less a type of leadership, and more a requirement of it.

By Aimee Hansen

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Why Being “True to Yourself” Can Hold You Back From Your Leadership Journey

By Aimee Hansen

“Countless books and advisers tell you to start your leadership journey with a clear sense of who you are. But that can be a recipe for staying stuck in the past. Your leadership identity can and should change each time you move on to bigger and better things,” says Herminia Ibarra, professor of Leadership and Learning at INSEAD.

In an article entitled “The Authenticity Paradox” in Harvard Business Review’s January 2015 issue, Ibarra challenges the predominant views and momentum on authenticity to assert that “true to self” approaches can hinder leadership growth. She argues “a too rigid definition of authenticity can get in the way of effective leadership,” often keeping leaders from evolving as they gain new insight and experience.

“Because going against our natural inclinations can make us feel like impostors, we tend to latch on to authenticity as an excuse for sticking with what’s comfortable,” she explains. “In my research on leadership transitions, I have observed that career advances require all of us to move way beyond our comfort zones. At the same time, however, they trigger a strong countervailing impulse to protect our identities.”

Misunderstanding the Leadership Journey

How did we all come to revere “true to self” approaches? In her book ACT LIKE A LEADER, THINK LIKE A LEADER, Ibarra states the “holy grail of leadership development” that says you must navigate your way to leadership from a clear inner compass of who you are (inside-out development) is a fallacy derived from a research tradition of profiling highly effective leaders NOT the journey they took to get there. Ibarra’s research on the “development of leader identity” suggests that people become a leader by acting like a leader, which necessitates acting outside of your self-perceived identity rather than within it.

According to what she calls the out-sight principle, when it comes to leadership, what we do changes how we think, what we value, and who we see ourselves as – not the other way around. She writes, “Simply put, change happens from the outside in, not from the inside out.”

The Danger of Staying “True to Self” for Women

Ibarra spoke to us about how latching onto authenticity plays out for women. “The more common trap I see women falling into is not acting like a man but sticking too long to an authentic but outdated way of leading.”

She shared a scenario of role-transition in which both men and women were clearly out of their depths. “Women were more likely to try to prove their competence by demonstrating technical mastery over the long term; while men are more intent on making a positive first impression to create relationships.”

She explains how latching onto authenticity back-fired, “The women cited their reliance on ‘substance rather than form’ as a more ‘authentic’ strategy and thus as a source of pride; yet they were also frustrated with their inability to win their superiors’ and clients’ recognition.” She observed, “Despite the value they placed on authenticity, their cautious and protective behavior wasn’t necessarily true to self either, and they had a harder time enlisting others’ support because they were perceived as less adaptive and flexible than their male peers.”

Ibarra strongly emphasizes however “the divergent strategies of men and women are not due to issues of confidence or personality, i.e. women being more cautious, prudent or less risk taking and bold than men. What explains women’s heightened authenticity concerns is ‘second generation bias,’ defined as the powerful yet often invisible barriers to women’s advancement that arise from cultural beliefs about gender, as well as workplace structures, practices, and patterns of interaction that inadvertently favor men and accumulate to interfere with a woman’s ability to see herself and be seen by others as a leader.”

The antidote to that self-perception gap, of course, is leading. INSEAD research has shown that the more leadership experience women have, the less identity conflict they experience as a woman and a leader.

The authenticity paradox is especially acute for women in male-dominated companies. Ibarra told us, “Stepping up to leadership in male-dominated cultures is particularly challenging for women because they must establish credibility in cultures that equate leadership with behaviors that are more typical of men and where powerful female role models are scarce… If they ‘don’t look like a leader; to the seniors who evaluate their potential, they are less likely to get the assignments and sponsorship that are the heart of the learning cycle involved in becoming a leader.”

The Importance of Being “Adaptively Authentic”

In her HBR article, Ibarra encourages leaders to view themselves as works in progress with adaptive professional identities evolved through trial and error, acknowledging “That takes courage, because learning, by definition, starts with unnatural and often superficial behaviors that can make us feel calculating instead of genuine and spontaneous. But the only way to avoid being pigeonholed and ultimately become better leaders is to do the things that a rigidly authentic sense of self would keep us from doing.”

This takes more courage for women, because it can lead to a catch-22 as Ibarra shared with us, “When women are authentic, leading in less prototypical ways — crafting a vision collaboratively, for example, rather than boldly asserting a new direction — their contribution and potential is more likely to go unrecognized. But ‘chameleon’ strategies, that involve emulating the leadership styles of successful role models – as men are more apt to do – are less effective and less appealing to women in male-dominated leadership companies: they are evaluated negatively if they appear to be ‘acting like men’ and the styles that work for men are less likely to be a good fit for and appealing to them.”

In HBR, Ibarra proposes being “adaptively authentic”, a leadership approach that comes from embracing a playful attitude to identity rather than a protective one, a willingness to try out possible selves to figure out what’s right for new challenges.

Ibarra shared two thoughts with us for women under biased pressure to prove themselves as leaders, “First, often time you can play around with different ways of being in your side projects and extra curricular activities first, where the spotlight isn’t so bright. Second, you can’t underestimate the risk of doing just as you always have. At different points in your career you reach inflection points where the only way to ‘prove yourself’ is to just try new stuff because the old way clearly isn’t working.”

In HBR, she argues that being too internally focused can limit us, “Without the benefit of what I call out-sight — the valuable external perspective we get from experimenting with new leadership behaviors — habitual patterns of thought and action fence us in. To begin thinking like leaders, we must first act: plunge ourselves into new projects and activities, interact with very different kinds of people, and experiment with new ways of getting things done…Action changes who we are and what we believe is worth doing.”

Women and Adapting to Influence

Ibarra shared perspective on how women can influence leadership as they adapt to become better leaders, “Christine Lagarde (Managing Director of the IMF) has a lovely phrase for women: she says you have to ‘dare the difference,’ meaning dare to be different, to bring to your company your unique gifts, values and perspective as a woman and an individual. I can’t agree more.”

“But,” she cautions, “that doesn’t mean you don’t adapt to essential ‘leadership demands’ to think more strategically beyond your narrow area of expertise, to develop a full arsenal for selling your ideas to the people who have to buy in to make them reality, and to stretch your style so that you can inspire and persuade a more diverse audience. Being authentic doesn’t mean you just say ‘It’s not me to go out on a limb;’ it means you experiment until you find new ways of leading that work and also feel authentic.”

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The revolving door in the boardroom – Why men beget men

Observing gender diversity progress at top executive levels and in the Fortune 1000 boardroom is like watching an uncommitted jogger – we’re moving in the right direction, but where’s the pace?

INSEAD’s Van Der Hyden commented that reaching “historic highs” of 4.8% female Fortune 500 CEOs isn’t exactly impressive as it’s touted: “A more accurate statement is that when one starts at (or near) zero any positive change is (almost) infinite progress.”

In a recent article, Van Der Hyden points out that “the barriers (behaviors, labels, biases…) that prohibit the progression of women to the top are deep-rooted, pernicious, and ubiquitous… and much more prevalent than we imagine and recognise.”

These include serious pay disparities on top jobs, traditional-values skewed decision making, limiting perceptions around career path, women being mentored more but sponsored less than men, for a few.

Our founder and CEO Nicki Gilmour summed up 2014 boardroom figures as “Groundhog Day”: 17.7% of board positions are held by women in the Fortune 1000, a gain of 90 board seats during 2014. The US trails Europe in female board representation in S&P companies.

A recent study shows that the reason we may feel like we’re running in circles is that the boardroom has a revolving door.

“Running in Place”

A recent study entitled “Progress on gender diversity for corporate boards: Are we running in place?” analysed field data from more than 3000 companies across 9 years and found that voluntary gender equality efforts are hampered by a tendency towards gender matching – the tendency to pick a female board member when a female board member leaves and a male board member when a male board member leaves.

This is an obvious equation for perpetuating the status quo that the researchers point out could seriously undermine voluntary goals to build gender equality over time.

“The predominance of male directors results in a self-perpetuating outcome,” the researchers wrote. “The more women on the board, the better the chance they will further increase their representation, but these estimates suggest that it is a slow process, and not a gender-neutral one.”

The researchers conducted laboratory studies to understand the field evidence, and it revealed that the gender matching dynamic operates underneath stated and articulated thought processes. Participants judge gender as an insignificant factor when directly asked about it and give different reasons for their selections. “Yet, when controlling for these other reasons,” the researchers reported, “the gender of the departing candidate still plays a powerful role of determining the gender of the candidate selected.”

The researchers also found that talking about the importance of diversity did not increase the chances a woman candidate would be selected to replace a departing male executive. What did help was increasing the ratio of women in the candidate pool, but still a strong gender-matching effect remained.

In other words, banging the diversity drum doesn’t change boardroom composition towards greater gender equality.

Changing boardroom composition does.

The researchers report, “Our results suggest that the glacial pace at which women’s participation on boards is increasing may stem from a sub-conscious heuristic that guides people’s decisions towards using the gender of the departing director as a cue to the appropriate choice of a replacement…valuing diversity may not be sufficient to increase boardroom gender diversity.”

Getting Real about Results

Quotas, which can attract highly qualified applicants, are incredibly controversial but a more restrictive word for women is status quo. We can talk our way around diversity all day, and still not hit on the unconscious and ingrained dynamics that are at play even after everybody walks away from the table nodding their head, and indeed, while at it.

Researchers struggle to see how gender equality will show any real progression at a voluntary rate without public targets. Legislation and mandatory quotas are not generally favored in the USA environment. However, some non-quota initiatives recommended to improve boardroom diversity include “short-term goal setting, targeting, and disclosure, and a long-term focus on increasing the pipeline of qualified female board candidates.”

While women-led campaigns can push for results, getting more highly qualified at executive levels and in the boardroom comes down to companies delivering by taking up those initiatives with commitment, which poses a question.

What else are corporations truly committed to achieving that they do not set tangible, measurable, and reported targets for? And if they don’t set targets, are they committed?

By Aimee Hansen

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