Lisa Hartley has been in the heart of Silicon Valley in marketing, sales and product leadership roles for two decades with human capital management software with companies including SuccessFinder, SuccessFactors, Taleo, and PeopleSoft. During this time, she had the good fortune to meet and be inspired by many talented women including (by way of WillowCreekGLS) Sheryl Sandberg. In her recent talk to this group, she reiterated the sad fact that women make up only 5% of CEO’s globally despite better than average performance demonstrated by women at the top.
A recent study showed the annualized return for female-led firms was 25%, compared with just 11% for the broader market. In the US we’ve reached an all-time high of Fortune 500 companies led by female CEOs – a total of 32. So what gives?
There are three (addressable) reasons women are so poorly represented at the top of the organizational pyramid:
- political will
- institutional support
- confidence and a desire to lean into leadership roles
Point 1. Policy Support
We agree with Sheryl Sandberg that we need significant policy changes to encourage women to lead. Equal work for equal pay, affordable childcare, and cultural change that makes it OK for either mom or dad to raise the kids. She told the green shirt story that is worth repeating. As busy COO of Facebook and Mom, she makes time to take her son to school, on occasion. St. Patrick’s Day is one of those days. But upon arriving another mother kindly reminds her of the holiday and need for a son to be in requisite “green” outerwear. Sheryl considers pushing meetings to make a green t-shirt Target run. Her wise husband suggested this is an excellent lesson for their son to learn to be okay with being DIFFERENT.
This is an excellent reminder that guilt is an exhausting companion. Let it go. It will be okay.
Point 2. Company Support
Corporations ARE slow to accept the equality of women. The news is rife with large companies such as Google and Uber struggling with the role of women in the workplace. Research also shows a lack of board support means “fix it” female CEO’s tend to have shorter tenures than men in similar turnaround positions (Marissa Mayer, Yahoo comes to mind). Dynamic institutional change needs to happen now that promotes mentorship/sponsorship training, opportunities for non-traditional succession, and a culture that supports clear outcome-based performance metrics rather than face time.
Point 3. Personal Engagement
What is not being addressed in today’s dialogue is the very thing individual women can control, our inner belief system. Our research with nearly 200 male and top female executives confirms women leaders are:
- lower in self-respect (holding ourselves in high regard, knowing our worth)
- lower in self-confidence (faith in our ability to succeed)
- lower in self-fulfillment (confidence in our ability to overcome failure)
We also are also significantly less likely to make lifestyle sacrifices to succeed. And this phenomenon seems to be most acute for millennials.
If our current leaders are showing a deficit in “self-efficacy,” what must the rest of the upcoming star women leaders be thinking? Well, they are considering the costs and finding the business case for leadership less than compelling.
In fact:
- 42% of millennial women don’t think sacrifices female leaders make are worth it
- less than 25% of working mothers have any desire to be a leader of the industry; instead, most are focused on acquiring the right balance between career and home
- fortune.com noted a study showing only 11% of employees overall aspired to the C-suite. And of that 11%, only 31% of millennial women said the CEO job fit with their ultimate career goal
Net/Net
Women have the skills, experience and behaviours to succeed but to want it, we must be trained for it (early) and we must see role models across business and government succeeding. Like boys who are encouraged on the playground, we need to help young girls to compete and win and compete and fail.
Moreover, companies need to show young women that the road to leadership is achievable.
To move women up now, they must:
- identify women with executive talent early in their careers
- provide sponsors who will help women build self-esteem, inner confidence, and optimism about their ability to succeed
- adopt outcome-based incentives that allow for work/life flexibility so highly competent women refrain from opting out because of the perceived family and lifestyle sacrifice required
What Businesses Can Do to Build Women’s Potential
Companies can play a role in addressing and improving women’s confidence—and success—in the workplace:
- Identify women with high executive talent earlier in their managerial career.
- Provide them with coaching that enhances their self-esteem, inner confidence, and optimism about their ability to succeed at the executive level.
- Develop more options for work/life flexibility. Some highly competent women clearly have executive potential, but many are opting out because of the perceived family and lifestyle sacrifice required.
We are working to provide solutions for both insight and action to help women and the businesses they work with, close the gap between success and self-fulfillment. We dispell the myths female executives tell themselves.
Resources: Where to Start
One of the reasons we use SuccessFinder is that we are passionate about delivering programs to help identify, engage and advance women in leadership. Our Executive leadership program and Future leaders program provides:
- data to know who has the natural propensity to achieve at different levels of leadership
- data to drive the directed development plans that get results
Female leaders scored significantly (10-15%) lower than males in:
