I’m on a mission and I want you to join me. I am officially launching the Think Leadership. Think Female. campaign. Why? Because it’s long overdue.
There is a global phenomenon called “think manager, think male.” It is a well-researched stereotype that results in us automatically associating men and masculine characteristics with leadership. We all do this. Sadly, not only does this tendency result in biases that prevent women from ascending into more leadership roles, but it also undervalues the many qualities that are required for leadership today.
Research shows that women tend to score higher on most leadership capabilities, despite the “think manager, think male” stereotype. I hear many organizations say they value teamwork, collaboration, talent development, and emotional intelligence. Yet the senior leadership ranks are still a pit of toxic posturing, bullying, and egoism. There is mounting research that shows that women-led companies, or companies with a 50/50 executive gender split, have more engaged employees. Women-owned companies are also shown to have higher returns, and new research shows that when women are brought into the C-suite, they shift how the organization thinks about innovation, which in turn results in more value-creating strategies.
It’s clear the world needs more women in leadership.
Here’s what we can do—Together.
First, if you are a woman who is doubting your leadership potential, stop it. If you hear another woman doubting their potential, stop it. There’s much work to do here.
Unfortunately, women’s belief that they don’t have what it takes to advance into more senior roles is chronic, pervasive, and devastating. Global consulting firm Korn Ferry in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation conducted a study to understand how to create a sustainable pipeline of female CEOs. They interviewed fifty-seven female CEOs from Fortune 1000 companies or other large privately held companies.
The most troubling outcome of the study for me was that despite having tremendous potential, the majority of women CEOs who participated in the study had never seen the role of CEO as a possibility for themselves. In fact, a shocking 65 percent of the women in the study said they never thought they could be CEO until someone told them they had what it took. A mere 9 percent said they had always wanted the top position.
I know that not everyone wants to be a CEO or senior leader. That’s fine. But that women at every level don’t believe the CEO position is possible for them is heartbreaking.
If you don’t believe you are a leader or that you can become a leader, reframe. Think Leadership. Think Female. You are absolutely leadership material. Here’s how I know.
Kelly Shue, Yale Professor of Finance reports on the outcome of a recent study using a database of almost 30,000 management-track employees at a large retail chain. What she and her colleagues found was that women are 14% less likely to be promoted at the company in each year, and that a major factor preventing women from being promoted is that they are consistently judged as having lower leadership potential than men.
Potential is a more subjective construct to measure, which makes it susceptible to further bias. The terms we associate with management and potential are stereotypically associated with males such as assertiveness, charisma, and ambition.
We must change these associations because they no longer serve us. We must change those terms that are erroneously associated with good leadership (I’m looking at you charisma), those traits that are erroneously associated with men (ahem ambition), and those skills that penalize women when they display them (that’s right assertiveness).
Now listen up people managers. Your role is critical.
The researchers also found that managers consistently underestimate women’s ability to perform in the future, even when the women outperformed men in the current evaluation period and future periods. “It appears that they [women] were held to a higher standard,” Shue says.
And the real kicker is that the effect gets stronger the more senior a woman becomes. Shue says, “Women get progressively lower potential scores relative to their actual future performance as we rise up the corporate ladder. So this is going to contribute, I think, to a stronger and stronger glass ceiling the higher up we go.”
This needs to stop. If you are a manager, you also need to do some reframing. You must examine and question your default thinking when you think about the performance, potential and ambition of your team members. You must examine and question what you believe it takes to be a good leader, and you must do a better job nurturing leadership in women.
A KPMG Women’s Leadership Study sought to understand how the aspiration and ambition to lead was developed and nurtured—or not—in women. They surveyed 3,014 US women (2,410 professional working women and 604 women in college) between the ages of eighteen and sixty-four. Among the findings were these disheartening statistics: 67 percent of women said they need more support building confidence to feel like they can be leaders, and 59 percent said they sometimes find it hard to see themselves as a leader.
It's no surprise that women feel this way when no matter how well they perform, they can never get ahead. No matter how many performance expectations they exceed, they never are deemed to have potential.
And that is why I’m on a campaign to retire the old stereotype of “think manager, think male”. It’s time to Think Leadership. Think Female. Period.
Are you with me?