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.
These dynamics help explain the fact that the pipeline of women in the middle is wide but doesn't proportionately propel women to the top. Managers' actions to counter this include more coaching of women on the business, stronger asks when offering women key positions, and removing assumptions about women's interest in developmental opportunities.
Similarly, DHL Global Forwarding is getting their EMEA executives involved in understanding the impact of The Missing 33%® and the importance of PIE Mentoring. They are also engaging them directly in a multi-month program to prepare women to move into country management positions. We predict that their clear goal and strongly engaged management will reap positive results.
At Alcatel-Lucent, they're tackling the challenge of women's advancement differently. They are educating all their managers around the globe about gender dynamics that create barriers for women. In many cases they're coupling the education with executive teams' planned talent/succession discussions.
And now that Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook (photo above) has publicly shifted the discussion from "what's wrong with women" to address the mindsets of managers (stereotypes and assumptions) we hope that other organizations will follow suit. At Davos in 2013 she described:
"...managers who unconsciously reflect stereotypes when they judge women's performance, saying: "She's great at her job but she's just not as well liked by her peers," or: "She's a bit aggressive." "They say this with no understanding that this is the penalty women face because of gender stereotypes," she said."
At Leading Women we are expert at delivering the tools that women need to transition from the middle into senior and executive positions. If you’d like to learn more about partnering with managers to advance women in your organization,
More Leading Women Blogs on Gender Dynamics HERE
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