The Latest Insights from Leading NOW

While on Facebook the other day, I came across this post from a friend, who works in HR for a well-known US-based health insurance company, and I could not get what she wrote out of my head.

In a recent blog, I mentioned a story about a group of 72 companies who have committed to making gender diversity a business imperative, with accountability for it within the senior executive team. This story has caused quite a bit of commotion in social media and we’ve seen a lot of questions popping up in LinkedIn: “How are they planning on preparing the women for leadership?” “What will they do differently?” “How will they identify what needs to be done (so I can emulate it)?

When presenting proposals for their strategic initiatives, D&I executives often face challenges from colleagues in HR who ask something like this:

In an interview on Worldwide Business with kathy ireland® that will be airing this coming weekend, Leading Women’s CEO Susan Colantuono was asked the question: “If you had one piece of advice to give to a CEO, what would it be? She answered, “As a CEO, or as an executive or director for that matter, if women aren’t proportionately represented throughout your organization, you aren’t facing a women’s issue — you’re facing a talent development issue with business implications. And so it’s important to bring your personal commitment and the same level of organizational accountability to that challenge as you would to any business issue.”

With Father's Day in the US last weekend, it got me thinking about working families and what companies are doing to keep and support both working mothers and working fathers. The US Department of Labor reports that 70% of women with children under 18 years old participate in the labor market in some way, signaling a change from the days where father went off to work and mother stayed home and raised the children.

Sitting in a talent discussion a manager says, "She wouldn't want that assignment, she has young kids." Sound far fetched in the 21st century? It isn't! Our research finds that barriers created by mindsets like this are reported by women's focus groups in countries including the US, Canada, Brazil and India and focus groups of male managers in countries such as Belgium, China, Italy and Mexico.

Most executives believe the "gender problem" isn't real. And many wonder why we're still talking about it. I recently read two reports on Gender Diversity published by McKinsey& Company: Women in the Workplace 2015, and The CEO’s Guide to Gender Diversity, that illustrate how real it is and why it hasn't been fixed.

The 2016 Deloitte Millennial Study is out - and Leading Women's research is in and neither is great news for companies without a leadership development program for their Millennial women: Deloitte research says: “This year’s survey shows that women are equally likely as men to rate 'opportunities for career progression and leadership roles' as a major factor for staying at or leaving a job.” “Millennials want to work for organizations that have a purpose beyond profit, and they want those organizations to provide opportunities to develop leadership skills. These may be the two most important factors in creating job satisfaction and long-term loyalty, especially among Millennial women.” “This year’s survey shows women (67 percent) are slightly more likely than men (64 percent) to leave their employers within the next five years. One reason could be that 48 percent of female respondents say they are 'being overlooked for potential leadership positions.'”

Recently I read an article about Fortune Magazine’s Pattie Sellers moderating a discussion with execs from Facebook, Coca-Cola and FCB Worldwide on how their companies were attacking the problem of unconscious bias. When referring to unconscious bias, Maxine Williams, global director of diversity at Facebook spoke about “a problem that, as increasing numbers of companies are realizing, prevents them from improving their workforce diversity and typically interferes with the productivity of their employees.” When Seller asked the audience of 200 executives whether they had unconscious bias training programs within their company, only a dozen raised their hands. When asked how many would like to have a program, practically the entire room raised their hands. Huh. If unconscious bias is as big a problem as it seems, why don’t more companies have a plan to deal with it?

When it comes to overcoming mindsets that cause the leadership gender gap, one of the practices that we recommend is to require recruiters (internal and external) to deliver diverse slates of candidates for key positions. While companies often focus on senior positions, we recommend this practice be implemented for positions above the diverging point (the point at which the % of women begins to decline and that of men increases).