Seize the Day: 8 Ways to Build a Female-Friendly Leadership Pipeline

Dr. Rebecca Self shares ways organizations are retaining and building leadership pipelines for high-performing women.

In mid-2009, for the first time, women made up more than half of the US workforce. On the final day of 2009, a USA Today article noted that stocks of the 13 woman-led Fortune 500 companies were up an average 50% for the year, doubling the performance of the S&P 500 overall. These figures might seem like cause for celebration of the, “We’ve come a long way, baby” type.

 

Not so fast. On the other hand, in May 2010 Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis was fined $250 million in the U.S. for systemically discriminating against female employees.  Women head up only 3% of the Fortune 1000.  The percentage of women leaders actually declined 1% last year. Women still lag behind men in salary and promotion.

This isn’t just an American challenge: Deutsche Telekom’s instituted a quota to fill top leadership spots with women; in Finland CEOs must publicly explain the figures if women are not well-represented at the top.

 

The implications for business seem clear: high-performing female talent represent a huge missed opportunity in the leadership pipeline. Women are entering the workforce in well-educated droves, and are not making it up the leadership pipeline.

 

There are several reasons: A recent Harvard Business Review article illustrated that smart, young women are not given equal starting positions to their male counterparts, and it’s almost impossible for them to catch up. TNM’s Dr. Marcia Reynolds, author of the new book Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction, reports that talented women are quicker to leave dissatisfying positions than their male counterparts. Women are also leaving stable positions to start their own businesses. Women take time off to care for young children, too.

 

How can you and your organization better capitalize on and honor your top female talent? Here are eight concrete ways to engage, motivate and ensure success of female leaders, and some companies doing it well:

 

1. First, make sure your organization is giving men and women equal starts.

The HBR article recommends taking the resumes of 100 recent hires, removing all identifying factors, and assigning appropriate job roles. See if those are the roles they were given, or if men were given better starting positions than women.

 

2. “Make sure women are appropriately developed.” 

“Give them the right tools and they will rise to the challenge,” Reynolds wrote in her Forbes article “How to Make the Workplace More Appealing to Top-Performing Women.” When asked what the right tools are and who’s using them, she cited GlaxoSmithKline’s extensive leadership training program, which includes mentoring, coaching and semi-annual conferences with a cohort of female colleagues.

Reynolds dispenses more tips for leaders of high-potential and high-performing women:

3. Help women see how their work is meaningful.
4. Affirm women’s value and unique contributions.
5. Give women frequent new challenges.
6. Create a collaborative environment.

In support of building collaborative cultures, Reynolds cites Dr. Anne Perschel’s “Work-Life Flow: How Individuals, Zappos, and Other Innovative Companies Achieve High Engagement.”  The article, she says, includes references to Patagonia’s annual survey measurement of the degree of meaning employees experience in their work and Tony Hsieh’s Zappos, which hires primarily based on values then stretches employees to learn new skills once they’ve arrived.

 

7. Give women opportunities to make a difference in the world outside your company.

In Marketing to Women, Marti Barletta stresses that the most important thing to women is knowing they make a positive difference. Some multinationals are working with external vendors to ensure that sense of "giving back." The Trestle Group Foundation works with sponsor companies including IBM, Microsoft and PepsiCo matching high-performing female executives for six-month coaching stints with successful female entrepreneurs in emerging markets.  It’s a win-win: the multinational executives contribute knowledge and expertise to innovative women in developing areas of the world, helping to employ more people there, gaining knowledge about market conditions and having a rewarding, meaningful leadership development experience.

 

8. Engage Women at All the Different Points in Their Careers.

For another example of a meaningful leadership development opportunity, see Sara Lee’s Returnships, designed to provide opportunities for mid-career individuals re-entering the workforce after having been away for a number of years.

 

That’s 8 ways to ensure engagement and development of top female talent. From start to re-entry, ongoing communication tips and external leadership development for mid- and late-career star performers, these programs and practices can transform yours into a female-friendly Leadership Pipeline. 

 

Special Book Launch note:

Purchase Dr. Marcia Reynolds' Wander Woman on June 15, 2010 and email the receipt to Marcia@WanderWomanBook.com to receive a personal guide to accompany the book's many exercises. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to charity. Marcia adds: “If you’re a woman working in an organization that mismanages high-achieving women, there's a letter you can copy and send to your CEO at www.wanderwomanbook.com in the top right corner.”

 

Rebecca L. Self, Ph.D. is a new media & talent development expert based in Switzerland.  She tweets @rebeccalself