The Latest Insights from Leading NOW

Part 5 of our “Gender + Diversity Playbook: Setting and Achieving Your Goals for 2021 and Beyond” focuses on the importance of removing gender-biased language from HR tools. If you’re following along, this is #4 on the Top 5 list from our CEO’s blog post 'From One CEO to Another--It’s Time to Get Focused': Remove gender-biased language from HR tools

When I originally thought about why I wanted to write this post, my intent was to share stories from Leading Women’s “diverse” team about a micro-aggression they experienced in their career that they, as women of color, found impactful. Here I was thinking that my team would jump at the chance to “talk” about how their experiences and situations could have been handled differently. Instead, I received a well-deserved come-uppance of my own.

In Part 4 of our “Gender + Diversity Playbook: Setting and Achieving Your Goals for 2021 and Beyond”, we are focusing on the impact of Gender Dynamics and how to change your company’s culture to be more inclusive by removing the barriers to women’s advancement. This week we'll tackle #3 on our top five list of things you need to do to get results and close the leadership gender gap: Educate your leadership to reduce the negative impact of Gender Dynamics on talent decisions.

Leading Women's Global Reach Continues; Signs Exclusive Partnership with Australian-Based Advancing Women in Business & Sport BOSTON, Sept. 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading Women, a global management consulting company focused on bringing gender balance to leadership teams, announced today it has entered into an exclusive licensing partnership with Advancing Women in Business & Sport (Advancing Women), Australia's top enterprise for providing research, advisory and consulting services on equality, inclusion and gender diversity, to offer Leading Women's award-winning content and programs in Australia and New Zealand. The partnership strengthens Leading Women's global reach and broadens its footprint into the sports industry.

100 years ago today, August 18th, Tennessee became the final state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment, and a week from now, August 26th, it was officially signed into law. August 26th is now known as Women’s Equality Day here in the United States. While we are celebrating this watershed moment in US history, we should ask ourselves how far the 19th Amendment went towards granting women’s equality?

Today, we continue our 7-part series “Gender + Diversity Playbook: Setting and Achieving Your Goals for 2021 and Beyond.” In Part 1, we covered 2020’s misses & 2030 goals, and in Part 2 Leading Women’s CEO shared the Top 5 things that CEOs can do to close its gender + diversity leadership gap. Next up, we’ll break down those Top 5 actions—addressing each action individually—to help organizations get the results they want, to achieve gender balance in the organization. --- How to Engage & Retain More Women Executive commitment to, and sponsorship of, women’s advancement—advocating for the business case: Simply put, leaders need to demonstrate their commitment by mentoring/sponsoring women in order to ENGAGE & RETAIN them. Make sure your leadership puts them into the mix for promotions and make sure they’re part of their own succession plans.

I recently had the pleasure of joining Steve Rush on his podcast "The Leadership Hacker." I'm a big fan, and was excited to be invited to speak with him. Before the official interview, he and I discussed our perspectives on women in leadership - and I was thrilled to hear that during his career he frequently hired more women leaders than men! And, I'm pleased to say that Steve is absolutely committed to gender balance in his podcast, and will be working diligently to interview an equal number of men & women leaders.

Time for a reality check about “Closing the Leadership Gender Gap”—something every CEO should strive for in their organization, but few actually get right (or get it done!). And while you’ve probably been talking about becoming a more inclusive and diverse company for a while now, have you ever really asked yourself why you’re no closer to closing that gap than you were ten years ago?

This season of Covid has certainly shed a new light on the inequities in the workforce and communities. From the new pressures on working women with children at home full-time, to the data that’s emerging on how Covid is impacting the underserved, to horrific demonstrations of racism. Many have said that Covid has become the tinder for the flames that are needed to burn down the vast array of inequities that exist. From a gender perspective we have seen lots of “new” goals and promises make headlines, with more and more organizations willing to state their commitment to a 50/50 gender balanced workforce by 2030. Yes, in response to the coronavirus, but also in response to data like this from McKinsey’s latest “Diversity Wins” which states: “companies in the top quartile for gender diversity in their executive teams were 25 percent more likely to experience above-peer average profitability.”

This week we invited Tim Kemp, our Senior Consultant based in the United Kingdom, to author our most recent blog post. Read ON! --- 35 years ago I wrote a chapter in a book called Gender and Work. My chapter was entitled ‘Who dares loses’ and was a modest attempt to encourage men to appreciate that greater gender equality meant accepting that there would be more capable women in positions that men had traditionally seen as their own preserve. In other words, if men were successful in playing a part in ensuring that power was more fairly redistributed, then it would also mean that we (men) would have to embrace the fact that many of us would lose some of that power. The more women took their places on boards and in the C-suite, the more they would replace men who had found a comfortable home there. A classic zero-sum-game. And while there is still a logic to the maths, this narrow assessment misses out on some fabulously important elements. Elements that have become my most valuable learning around the dynamics of inclusion in organisations over the past three decades.