The Latest Insights from Leading NOW

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.

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.

Career advice received by women covers only 2/3 of the success equation in business. This Missing 33%™ has serious implications for a woman’s chances of being seen as high potential, receiving promotions to senior positions, receiving optimal benefits from mentoring relationships and nurturing the next generation of women leaders.

When we asked women to tell us the best career advice they received and applied our definition of leadership to analyze what we heard, we discovered that: Nearly 75% of the advice had to do with the personal greatness component "Use the greatness in you..." Nearly 24% was advice about "...engaging the greatness in others." Only about 2% was advice about how to "...achieve and sustain extraordinary outcomes."

Conventional advice to women has little to say about executive communication, board communication and media skills. It's one reason why conventional advice to women won't close the gender gap at the top and why Leading Women focuses on these skills in our Leadership Mastery and Breakthrough Leadership programs. So, it's refreshing to come across a high-value news release from Anne D. Grant on executive communication. In the excerpt below, notice that among the skills being tested were use of numbers, positive monetary impact and development of products/process (i.e. Outcomes). Her findings are aligned with what we teach about Using the Language of Power™ and the Power of Language and with how to Self-Promote with Grace and Authenticity™.

This weekend I had the honor to speak at TEDxBeaconStreet on closing the gender gap at the top.

In advertising, it's the transition from managing the client to managing the business. In construction, it's the transition from managing the project to managing the business. In professional services firms it's the transition from delivering client services to advancing the business by revenue generation. In your company, it is likely the transition from managing managers to running a business.

When I talk about The Missing 33%™, the first research I cite is from a BusinessWeek cover story published in 2000. In short, the findings were that women "outshine their male counterparts on almost every measure."

In the past 40 years, corporations have tackled the challenge of women's advancement by working diligently on two fronts. They have worked on the women. They help women set career goals and tell them what skills they need to enhance in order to get ahead - leadership, self-promotion, negotiation and more. They have worked on corporate practices and policies. Instituting open job posting, mentoring programs, flexible work, day care options, maternity leave options and more. And they've gotten each of these areas about 66% right. As a result, women have made great strides into middle management. But they have not made great strides into senior leadership. One reason is what I call The Missing 33%™.

While I was away, many of you sent me links to the Harvard Business Review blog asking: Are Women Better Leaders than Men? The authors' assertions are that in an analysis of their 360 feedback reports of over 7000 managers, women were rated as outperforming men in nearly all of them - actually 12 out of 16. BUT hold on a minute! There are 2 major failings in their research. Let's use my definition of leadership to analyze the competencies they measure: