The Latest Insights from Leading NOW

In spite of decades of research identifying organizational barriers to women's advancement and strong business cases for getting more women into leadership positions, we continue to run into organizations (sadly often HR executives) who resist calls to take action to close the gender gap. One organization we know of treated their women's initiative leaders in the same way that our colleagues were treated back in the 1970s (when women's initiatives WERE a "futuristic social experiment").

The Gender Lens Penalty Have you ever wondered why senior women seem hesitant to advocate for gender initiatives and openly advocate for the advancement of other women? Here's new insight into the reasons:

Susan Colantuono, is the former CEO of Leading Women, a consulting firm acquired by Leading NOW. Colantuono spoke with Diversity Executive magazine. Below are edited excerpts from the interview.

Kudos to three of our clients, Turner Construction, DHL Global Forwarding EMEA and Alcatel-Lucent. Here's why: As part of its program for high potential women, Turner invited executives and the women's managers to presentations on The Missing 33%™ and the importance of PIE Mentoring™. Both sessions gave the managers insights into the subtle ways that men are often groomed for senior positions, but women aren't.

In Dan Rockwell's recent blog revealing Peter Drucker's 9 Functions of a Mentor, Rockwell lists 9 things a mentor should do. I wondered if he and, by extension, famed leadership theorist Drucker, were offering up CAKE or PIE Mentoring™ ideas.

The first time I heard the term elevator speech was in the middle of the dot-com bubble. I had been hired to design a three-day new employee orientation program for webMethods and the CEO was laying out the specifications. Among them he said this, "Everyone at webMethods must understand that they're salespeople. They must know our elevator speech and be able to pre-qualify potential customers anywhere they meet someone -- on the plane, at a cocktail party, at a conference."

February is Black History Month in the United States and what's historic this year is that while all around us change is endemic, when it comes to the advancement of Black women in major corporations, little is new. With a few exceptions - most notably: Ursula Burns, former CEO of Xerox, Rosalind Brewer of Walgreens, and Thasunda Brown Duckett of TIAA - the percentages of African American women at the top of and in director positions at Fortune 500 companies is appallingly small. The reasons are many, and we're grateful to share this insight gleaned from our work with multicultural women. For more African American women to make history in major corporations, women's leadership programs must address the fact that conventional advice to women can create problems for women of color.

In general, it is a mentor’s job to help her protégé position herself to achieve career success and the protégé’s job to work with her mentor to achieve career goals. When it comes to career success, our research indicates that men and women speak differently about mentors and their roles. Understanding this difference will help engage managers and executives as better mentors (and women as stronger protégés).

Michael Simonds, CEO* of UNUM wrote recently about women's advancement and closing the leadership gender gap. The whole article is worth a read and especially his awareness of the impact of gender dynamics (gender bias, stereotypes, assumptions) on women's advancement.

Too often mentors coach women on confidence and personality rather than business and financial ability. Diversity Executive magazine recently interviewed Susan L. Colantuono, CEO of Leading Women. Below are excerpts from the interview. (Please share this important info liberally with colleagues in and outside your company and other women in your organization.)