Women in Leadership

I recently had the opportunity to attend one of our client’s internal events and their dedication to hiring, retaining and understanding women in a knowledge based work force was not only impressive but fascinating. The way they articulated their finding was by applying a “gender-sensitive lens” and the summary below is how the Gender Lens is applied to performance assessment.

With this consulting firm, they found that the top three barriers for women progressing up the corporate ladder are:
- gender-based stereotyping,
- women’s exclusion from informal networks, and
- lack of visible role models for women to take lessons from or to aspire to.

In their finding they noted that women do not have any less ambition in regards to their career aspirations than men. However, unconscious biases and gender differences can play a role in whether women are able to achieve their career goals. There are clear patterns of differences between men and women on how they self-assess their contribution to an audit, project, or assignment. For example, women are less likely than men to self-promote most of their skills, talents and accomplishments. They are afraid to come across as being arrogant, self-centered, or aggressive. These characteristics are deeply rooted from childhood… Instead, being a team player who is sensitive to others’ needs is much more acceptable for women. How does this translate into the way women perform in the workplace?
There is a tendency for women to minimize their individual contributions in favor of highlighting team’s contributions. In self-assessment tests they tend to speak of their past accomplishments, what they actually did versus their future potential as a result of the skills they developed on the job. There is also evidence that indicates that women tend to place too much emphasis on their areas that need development versus their strengths making them sound like their fundamental weaknesses.
Gender-sensitive lens should be applied to help to calibrate the self-assessment and differences we may see. The reason why these differences was raised is that the company who hosted this conference call wanted to help these coachable women who might be too reluctant to promote themselves or their accomplishments, or might have overstated their development points. They wanted them to be alert to this and encourage them to seek guidance from their coaches and ensure that they are preserving a fair and balanced view of their achievements.
Management team and coaches should encourage women to complete self-assessments in a more balanced fashion. As a coach, you should try to find out what they have actually accomplished versus what tasks they have carried out. This can be done by asking follow-up questions about how their team members and clients would evaluate their contribution and the value they brought in. Everyone likes to feel they have made a difference.

As I think of the women who have worked for me in the past, this type of data would have been helpful in ensuring that I had asked the right questions to draw out information that would have added to their job satisfaction, helped them achieve more and giving them relevant feed back based on the Gender Lens.

Best regards,

Susan Corcoran