Women Mean Business

Nurturing Engaged Women Leaders

Women tend to find collaboration, empathy and team-building easier than men. A growing body of evidence indicates what we have suspected for a long time, that without enough of these traits at work in your leadership team, performance may suffer. Most of us are subject to unconscious bias whether we like it or not.

Why It Matters For Your Business

Simply put, greater gender diversity in leadership helps with managing risk, growing revenue and increasing innovation. There are complexities of course, for example when too few women come forward for certain roles, but those companies that achieve a better balance reap the rewards:

According to a study of 22,000 companies across the world, having at least 30% of leadership positions occupied by women, adds 6% to the net profit margin.¹
It’s not just women and their teams who benefit – involving men in gender parity initiatives and encouraging them to defy traditional masculine norms emphasizing fearlessness and toughness can improve the performance of the whole organization.²
Shareholders benefit too: figures for Return on Equity and on Invested Capital show that, on average, companies with the highest percentages of women board directors outperformed those with the least by 53% and 66% respectively.³

What’s Really Going On

According to a recent study by Aspire, less than 1 in 5 women actually love their work. Most are stuck with feeling just about “satisfied” (43%) or “OK” (33%). If you enjoy what you do, working at it is easier, and your motivation to improve will be easier to find than if you don’t.⁴

The opportunity to make a difference is one of the top 2 career motivators for women and recognition of work (more than just financial) is one of women’s top 3 motivators⁴

An Hewlett Packard internal report revealed that men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100% of them. This disparity has been attributed to a lack of confidence in women, but is in reality more likely to be a symptom of how men and women perceive the hiring process, with the latter overestimating the importance of formal training and qualifications, and under-utilizing the power of advocacy and networking.⁵

Key Questions

To what extent does your organisation provide of overt and challenging opportunities for women leaders to embrace and throw themselves into?
Do you have a culture of genuine recognition which supports confidence and self-belief?
How proactively do you promote an environment in which women can be their true selves and lead in their natural styles? Are you challenging the stereotypical and inaccurate view that collaborative approaches to leadership are always less credible than harder more competitive ways of working?
What could be the impact on performance if even more of your women leaders loved their work?

Finding Solutions

I’ll work with your organization to get to the heart of the matter and find out how energized your women leaders really are. We’ll find out what is working, what might work even better, and generate action to close the gap.

Agree scope and objectives

Engagement survey

Follow-up interviews

Key findings

Participant selection

Behavioural difference

Authentic Influence

Connections count

Circles Launch

Participant outcomes

Business outcomes

Lessons and Next Steps

Get in touch to find out how our Nurturing Engaged Women Leaders Programme can help you.

I'm ready to talk

¹Firms with More Women in the C-Suite Are More Profitable | Marcus Noland, Peterson Institute for International Economics; Tyler Moran, Peterson Institute for International Economics | Published by Harvard Business Review 2016

³The Bottom Line: Corporate performance and women’s representation on boards, Catalyst 2007

⁴The Great Female Corporate Quit: Will You Stay Or Will You Go? – Aspire 2014 Special Report

⁵https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless-theyre-100-qualified