What I learned from my male bosses about empowering women

Over my long career I was blessed to work with a lot of great men who supported women. I am forever grateful to those who took a chance giving me my first ever job, my first job in the new country when I moved to the US, my first executive role, my first C-level position and finally my first board seat. And of course, for offering an opportunity to learn from them. As we celebrate the International Women’s Day, let me share a few things that they showed me about creating diverse and inclusive teams. 

It is not just women’s role to help other women it takes everybody’s efforts. Furthermore, with more men holding positions in senior management, their support and effort is vital for creating new opportunities for women. 

1. You get what you measure - measure what matters.

Any COO would tell you, that the key performance indicators (KPIs) you choose drive the behaviors you get. Do you know where the glass ceiling is in your organization? If you even have one at all? There is a simple objective way to find out: check the percent of women at each level of the company. 

• If the number of women at the entry level professional jobs of the organization is low, it makes sense to look at University hiring, internships, and other programs filling the pipeline of talent. You may want to check, how they are structured; where the candidates come from and how do they get in; if those who run them represent a diverse group of role models and project the company’s values. Once you perform analysis, you will find an answer.
• If the number of women is high on the entry levels and then abruptly goes down somewhere in middle-management – this is where you may have a problem. It means that women join the company, but very few get promoted above a certain level. Again, it makes sense to look at the promotion process, supporting programs such as mentorship networks and internal talent development, and the process of external recruitment. Maybe fewer women get access to such programs or the slates for interviewing are filled up based on who knows whom and lack diversity. So, the natural actions would be to issue more invitations to women, add female mentors and role models, rethink and formalize the diversity of short-lists for new hires and promotions. If the dramatic drop in numbers happens at the executive positions level or even transitioning to the C-suite, it may reflect the lack of a talent pipeline build in prior years and addressed through external recruitment. 

Once you know where the problem is and what measures you plan to take to address it, then you can set meaningful KPIs to monitor your progress towards success or rethink the plan if you fall behind. Building diversity on all levels is not different from growing sales or market share in that sense. It takes a goal, a plan, integrated into the fabric of daily operations, a set of KPIs and a regular review of your progress. Just measuring ‘the share of women’ or number of promotions across a large organization once a year or when a board asks for it, is not that helpful. The actions to increase their numbers should be embedded in the daily talent management processes and reviewed on a quarterly basis, leading to the subsequent course corrections if needed.

I remember accepting a new role and finding out that only 13% of 1,500 employees within the organization reporting to me were female.  Worse, that most of them were trapped at the levels below mid-management with very few entering executive ranks. We focused on creating a professional woman network within the company, including the special programs for the senior level, like building awareness through public speaking and having breakfasts with the executive board. It was a wonderful team effort with other senior women in the company, HR colleagues and executive board members, who supported the effort once they clearly understood what role they could play. In a year, we promoted three women to heading sales in a region or industry sector. We were going through major changes to the organization, so these women made roughly a half of all new promotions. The sales leadership team became more diverse. 

2.    Female role models matter not only for women, but for the men who start ‘seeing’ women in senior roles. Several times, in different organizations, shortly after I joined in a senior line role, some men told me about a candidate for the job that ‘reminded them of me’. In truth, in each case our gender was the only thing that we had in common. We came from very different professional, educational and cultural backgrounds. Yet, the male managers suddenly ‘saw’ other women as candidates because of my position. I am sure, other women executives could share similar stories. 

The Hawthorne effect - solving an issue by paying attention to it virtually, shining a light at it - helps in the same way. This is why it is important to celebrate International Women’s Day in a company and ensure that not just women, but men participate as well. People feel engaged when they do something for the holiday – invite them to dress in purple, the traditional color of the holiday; put in a photo-booth with props to make it fun; serve food and people will always congregate around. Moreover, ask senior leaders personally to show up and demonstrate their support. Highlighting the importance of building an inclusive team and sending such a message from the top forces others to pay attention, consider possibilities and values.

3. Select candidates who can do the job, but not necessarily did the same job.People that are new to the role may bring a passion to learn and grow. Furthermore, they may invent completely new approaches. Innovation spans industries. Bringing in someone from a different business segment and transplanting some of their best practices may increase your chances to create a unique differentiation for your business. 

Similarly, select a job you may find difficult initially and can learn in the process – not something you have already done. Getting out of one’s comfort zone is the only way to grow. It has to be done carefully to avoid a disaster early in the role, the same way as promoting a candidate too high above his or her skills level may set the person up for a failure. However, it is a very important chance to consider: big gains require taking calculated risks.

Women tend to apply for the jobs where they can check all the boxes, while it is more common to see a man with a ‘can do’ attitude apply for the position when he meets only half of the requirements. This reminds me of a story, told by Ginni Rometty, the CEO of IBM.  She was offered a bigger job, but thought she was not ready yet.  So, she spent an evening talking to her husband and thinking out loud that she may be ready in half a year. He stopped her and said, “Do you think a man would have answered the question that way? In six months, you'll be ready for something else.” She took the job. 

4.    You can only help a person, who wants to help her or himself. This is what a wonderful man who hired me for my first executive position said, when I thanked him for the opportunity of an interview. No open doors, mentoring or advice can help someone who does not want to go an extra mile to learn new skills, build networks and demonstrate performance. 

More than once I mentored a woman, who stated that she wanted to grow professionally, and we put a plan together that required her to take a role in a different organization or function to build new skills, or to do an additional project to demonstrate capabilities. I followed up by introducing her to higher-ups, suggesting new projects or putting her name forward into a task force. Unfortunately, I saw some of them giving up quickly, choosing instead to move to another very similar role where they felt fully comfortable, or not finding motivation and time for additional initiatives. It is very dangerous to blame a victim, and we should remember that each situation is unique. Yet, if it was not important to the employee herself to demonstrate what she could do beyond her daily job, it was not important for her management either. Perhaps, the desire to grow was not that genuine or she lacked a realization how much effort the career advancement requires. Although management can open doors and provide tools, but it is ultimately up to the person to walk the walk.

5.    Try to have a woman candidate on the slate for every role you fill. We always want the best person for the job to get the job. Some advocate gender quotas, yet, they both help and hurt the candidates, who may be assumed by their peers to be hired without the necessary qualifications. The quotas also expand the regulatory burden on organizations.

 But we can broaden a field to give more women a chance to enter. There are wonderful female candidates in every field. Over my career I heard about a lack of women in data science, shipping, software developing and sales management. And I have examples in every one of these areas to prove that they exist and thrive with the right chance. Yet, often you cannot find these women if only trying to promote from within, or luring the same type of people from competitors in male-dominated industries. Casting a broader net may require looking at other industries or regions.

Give a woman a chance to apply and interview – this is all it takes. Sometimes, she becomes the one chosen, sometimes a stronger male candidate does. It also helps to name multiple interviewers to reduce the chances for a bias towards a certain gender or prior experience. With the potential for bias reduced and the initial group of candidates becoming more diverse the probability game takes over. With time you will build a stronger and far more diverse organization.

I am very proud that CEVA Logistics still celebrates the International Women’s Day seven years later after we started it in 2012. I smile each time when I see pictures of groups of employees wearing purple in my LinkedIn feed and get messages from former colleagues on IWD.

 During my four years at INTTRA we celebrated the IWD every year and promoted many women. Women made one third of the Executive Committee and many more joined on the Senior Leadership Team. Many of them in turn hired, mentored and supported other talented women building a great group of professionals working towards the same goal. It was a part of our values of being inclusive and transparent, and we selected other candidates who shared these values.

It is also an honor for me to serve on a very diverse board of Global Ports Investments plc. Once, during a meeting of Women Corporate Directors, an organization, that brings together women board members across many industries and countries, a panel speaker asked the audience to raise hands if we had more than one woman on the boards where served. Very few of us did. When I told my peer directors that at my current board at Global Ports Investments plc we had women making about one third of the board and chairing three committees, they were surprised. It is highly unusual for a company, especially one that is not serving a gender-specific market.

What I am not proud of is the fact that all of this constitutes exceptions. I want to live in a world where your response would have been ‘so what’. Where the senior women executives would not be tokens, knowing that any mistake they make, may be judged as a proof of a shortcoming for the whole gender group. We should build a world where gender stops being an issue when putting together a team.

I am very grateful to both men and women whom I had the privilege to work with, who build such a world every day, one team and one candidate at a time. 

*

I write about bringing IT innovation into business services, especially logistics, shipping and SCM, as well as about building a successful career and women empowerment. To read my future posts please click Follow from here and feel free to join me on Twitter.

#women, #IWD2019,  #boards, #womenempowerment, #empowerment, #gender, #technology, #logistics, #shipping, #careermanagement, #jobinterview #jobs, #innovation, #businesstrends