Women in Technology Management - Unlocking the potential
Shashank Rastogi
Sr. Director Software Engineering / Global Delivery Leader at Optum / UnitedHealth Group
Women in Technology Management follows through the traits of larger superset of Women in Management where like many other sectors, women are under-represented in technology leadership. The ratio of leadership positions in tech is far less then overall percentages of women working in technology. The under-representation of women in technology management on a high level may generally be assumed by most due to three aspects - capability; lack of interest; Or both capable and high on interest level but still not able to break invisible glass ceiling which is built by people of prejudice and stereotypes. While different people may feel strongly on any of these reasons, there are some more angles which needs to be seen.
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GAME OF CONFIDENCE
A major factor which additionally leads into current situation of under-representation of WITM are the views that are created subconsciously by most, where they see confidence and charisma as key ingredients to leadership potentials - which many relate little more to men. The uneven management gender ratio can be attributed to our inability to discern between confidence and competence. Skills like resoluteness, strong decision making, fortitudes, and creating an air of authority are liked in leadership roles in most areas. Everyone does look up to leaders for giving sense of direction; And a leader's own self-confidence signaling at workplace does improves chances of one been leadership potential.
There is thin invisible line where such likable traits are over exercised and over-confidence, arrogance, and narcissism steps in – which are essentially traits of weak leadership and end up degrading the effectiveness of a high performing team. A leader must set aside his selfish agendas to create a high performing team and the best way to do it by staying humble, respectful, and sincere towards the teams. Empathy should be at core of each professional relationship as well as in any business conduct.
Now if these are core skill needed out there, women are supposed to be naturally better than others in leadership roles with emotional intelligence being their stronger side and keeping up with modest behavior’s at large. When we look the at term’s 'accountability', 'responsibility', 'humble', 'longevity in organizations' - women may be doing better in almost all geographies. One mistake woman do is accepting masculine cultural norms and acting as “one among the boys” which exacerbates the problem by contributing to the normalization of this culture. Women need to work on their confidence game and overcome their professional fears to get over with this social stereo type which is another main glass ceiling barrier for them.
TECH MANAGEMENT
With technology organizations, the leadership role in a tech management however should always be a standing out winning case then women in management situation when compared across some other industries. Due to nature of work, some fields do have their reasons on nature of work, timings, physical exhaustion, socio-economic, leaving home for long for work reasons none of which are the case in technology and its management. Key examples of these other domains are basics and infrastructure, construction, mobility and transportation, seafarers, mining, energy, oil, and gas extraction and few more.
When women can do so well in medicine/healthcare and education, there shouldn't be any perplexities in information technology domain which in fact was pioneered by women. There is strong precedence of successful women in technology dating back more than a century. Ada Lovelace is known to be first computer programmer with her work in the core logical and statistical areas of 'Analytical Engine' developed in early 19th century; Grace hooper with creating first compiler; Margaret Hamilton is credited to coining the term 'Software Engineering'; Radia Perlman for developing spanning tree protocol; Catherine Johnson, Mary Coombs, Dina St Johnston, Adele Goldberg and so many more names who were out there getting their names registered in history of advent of computers as we know today. In brief, computers/technology/software engineering are not new territories for women or in fact they were been pioneered in some sense by women multi decades back.
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Most of the activities as needed in technology leadership have already been pioneered/proven by women. Technology is more of skill based and should be independent of gender biases as it does no good to it. Tech leadership Functions like technology assessment, information management, Incremental development, product management, technology forecasting, decision process, improvements and monitoring, R&D, licensing, leading and managing organizational changes, project management, technology insertions and everything else involved gets no advantage from being heavy on single gender, and in fact sits to gains heavily from diversity itself.
THE MID-LEVEL TRAP
Looking from lenses of leadership ladder through different stages - a burdensome aspect is that the traits as needed to be a successful manager are quite different from that of a leader. A successful manager is not always a ready-to-go case for a leadership role, and it takes lot of beating for a natural or budding leader to cross the managerial tenure for leadership levels, since the managers have to manage with multiple tedious tasks of creating high performing teams, executing amidst all barriers, follow through with their organization and leader's directions and much more. All this while staying in touch with the developments across the globe which may impact their teams and execution. With a mix of younger people where limited star performers are grouped with many others who are waiting for directions and to be professionally groomed and be motivated; the task gets more uphill and laborious for the mid-level managers.
Along with comes disrupted work-life balance during this tenure, which as well brings down the ratio of women moving north from this point - as they have additional family / home responsibilities. This is stage where at times they re-think for next levels as they imagine it to be even more demanding on work pressure. At the end, few times women settle for horizontal movements while others make further progress. In such an ordeal, growing self as a leader and to next level require well balanced leadership mentorship/coaching as well as a greater support eco system from the organizations to sustain. There definitely needs greater than regular support at middle levels for women employees to cross to the next level.
WHY THE NEED
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Well, women are always and will always be integral to societal growth and development. With a good percentage of gender ratio with equal men to women, it is imperative for women to be participating in all mainstream jobs with equal capacity and authority. Any nation or business if not equal opportunity and position for women having, is losing out of growth opportunities with having huge female population under-utilized as per their capacity. It is not just a social issue but equally a business and formal economy issue as well, with been reduced as under-utilized business resources due to lack of progression or untapped at right business opportunities. Everyone should have equal opportunity to be productive and contribute to the overall development of business/economy.
With greater diversity comes better business outcomes and diverse lens help push up innovation and enhanced decision making. Hiring a women employee should not be checkbox activity but to bring in different perspective. If former is the case, the hiring manager needs to fix their perspective and be creative in finding right women talent for the role. Maybe they are yet to experience the brighter side of finding the right mix in their teams.
Business should see these brighter sides for gender diversity, and not just for sake of media scrutiny or government regulation or improving public opinion etc. Adding another key business rationale of all - women control majority of household spending and markets (B2C) are ruled by women shoppers. Each business needs to look at their products from lens of women to stay in sync with product or services expectation.
THE HOW
Numerous researches have provided different strategies for businesses (including Information Technology) to bring in greater inclusion for women. This along with more careful treading of right practices should aim at bringing in greater women workforce to play to senior leadership and C-suite roles.?
Sharing some of initial steps which the teams, supervisors, leaders and organizations can look to put the right step forward in the direction of diversity and rightful inclusion, to help create right mix of women leaders.
As more organizations across the globe are getting tuned for greater inclusion and diversity, millennials are partnering with right foot forward with increasing women participation across the industries. It’s for the previous generations as well to pick up greater steam and unlock the potential to the fullest!
From-
Shashank Rastogi
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References
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268111001612