Championing Women Leaders

Beyond Sponsorship

Shaheena Janjuha-Jivraj,Kitty Chisholm

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137478955
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

Championship is the key differentiator between women who achieve leadership roles and those who don't. This book examines the reasons why championing works and why it is so important for female executive development in particular, and provides a user-friendly guide to develop workplace champions for female leaders in any organization

chapter 1

The CHAMP Model

Our story starts with a young girl, Maya, an enthusiastic youngster with parents who gave her a wide range of experiences and encouraged her to go for challenging goals. As she progressed through school she excelled in her studies and consistently achieved strong grades. She was a model pupil, straight “A” student, a great team player, a member of the student council. As Maya completed her schooling she successfully applied to study at a leading university. During her degree program she continued to go from strength to strength, her grades continued to remain strong and she managed to secure an internship opportunity in a world-class company. Upon graduation she had the pick of job offers. Interested in traveling and experiencing other cultures, she chose an international telecoms company that happened to have an equal split of males and females at graduate entry level.

Women in leadership – where are we now?

Women have achieved significant progress in leadership in a relatively short space of time. If we look at the Fortune 500 companies, 25 of the CEOs are women, and 20 years ago the list did not contain any women.¹ But in reality these women only constitute 5 per cent of the CEO roles on the Fortune list. The progress is there but we haven’t achieved enough and we are not moving quickly enough. Despite the immense progress in new business models and substantial shifts in global boundaries, the situation of women in leadership seems to have become stuck. In 2011, when Shaheena was involved in the EU debate on quotas, Norway was constantly flagged up as a shining example of what could be done to create more opportunities for getting women into leadership positions. Four years on, the examples of good practice and progress have not changed very much, even though we are now looking at a broader global platform. Based on progress to date, the UN estimates we will achieve gender parity in the workplace in 2096, and remuneration for work of equal value in 2090. What this really means is that neither our daughters, nor their daughters will achieve true parity, but if we are lucky it will happen with our great-granddaughters. Furthermore, women will achieve parity in decision-making in 2045. These statistics make for sobering thoughts about how much progress we have really made.

Despite the presence of women in education, not enough is being done to harness the power of this group into the economy. It is astonishing that the talents of over 50 per cent of human beings are not being fully harnessed to decision-making at the most senior levels in politics, public service, business, and civil society. Christine Lagarde, the first female Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, has argued that gender equality is a necessary economic principle and is not simply about social justice. She is clear about the need to involve both women and men in order to achieve global economic recovery, as stated in her keynote speech, “The Economic Power of Women’s Empowerment,” given in Tokyo in September 2014:²

Today more than ever, the global economy needs precisely this kind of radiant sun – to provide light and nourishment. To provide healing. To dry out the swamps of poverty and unrest. The reason is obvious. Seven years into the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression, the recovery is still too tepid and too turbulent. And even after the crisis abates, we will face grave challenges to growth – as a slower “new normal” sets in, as populations age, and as economic disparities increase. Given these challenges, we will need all the economic growth, dynamism and ingenuity we can get in the years ahead. Thankfully, a key part of the solution is staring us right in the face – unleashing the economic power of women. Bringing the world’s largest excluded group into the fold.

Identifying support structures for the “world’s largest excluded group” is complex, particularly in a relatively fragmented environment. Whilst a great deal of excellent work has focused on women in North America and Western Europe, we wanted to take a global perspective to identify the challenges women faced in their leadership goals. As we work in a globally mobile environment, we felt it important to identify and develop support structures for women that are seamless and so allow women to benefit wherever they are based.

The debate on women in leadership is firmly split into two halves and often resembles a tennis match, with both sides furiously lobbing demands at each other to either “fix” the women or to “fix” the organizations. We find this kind of language singularly unhelpful. We believe that the responsibility for accelerating the pace for gender equality in leadership is shared – between individuals – men and women – organizations and states.

Championing crystallizes a number of the areas that need to be addressed in order to make progress for women in leadership. We would argue that championing provides the essential relationship needed to create opportunities for talent promotion. However, to understand the immense potential of championing, it needs to be understood within its framework – what we have devised to illustrate and apply this is the CHAMP model.

The CHAMP model presents drivers for championing (see Figure 1.1). It provides a framework for action for women aspiring to leadership roles and for everyone in organizations committed to ensuring that the best of human talent has every possible opportunity to achieve leadership aspirations.

FIGURE 1.1 The CHAMP model

Source: ©Shaheena Janjuha-Jivraj, 2015.

C is for Culture

The environment plays a significant role in leadership and economic opportunities for women. Country legislation around gender equality in the workplace, which varies across regions, creates environments that will encourage or inhibit female economic participation and leadership opportunities. In Chapter 2, we will explore this in more detail by measuring the relationship between the country rankings on the annual Global Gender Gap report produced by the World Economic Forum and our data on the number of female executive and non-executive directors in privately listed companies.

Industry sectors also create significant influence on attitudes towards women in the workplace, particularly in circumstances where they have traditionally been male-dominated. The culture of sectors should not be underestimated, even in countries with well-established gender equality legislation in place. Policies may be in place but attitudes take a lot longer to change. Consider, for example, the case of Canada, a country with a strong emphasis on education, a good track record of gender equality legislation in the workplace, and a very diverse population. One of its provinces, Quebec, has quotas in place for women on boards in SOEs (state-owned enterprises).³ Despite having all of these structures in place, only 12 per cent of board positions are held by women.⁴ Canada’s economy is dominated by sectors that have a long-standing history of male dominance, including Energy (oil and gas), Agriculture, and Manufacturing.⁵

Countries that have the right legal frameworks to support gender equality do minimize the impact of discrimination and provide legal requirements for compulsory education of both genders until the completion of secondary schooling. Interestingly, these conditions do not automatically create parity in gender leadership. They certainly help to level out the playing field and create opportunities to achieve a baseline of gender equality in terms of university education and ability to learn and develop the right technical and specialist skills for certain sectors such as Medicine, Maths, Engineering, and Law. We are all more or less familiar with the stats on female graduates who occupy around 50 per cent of graduate jobs, and how these numbers drastically tail off by the time they reach middle-management level.

The different terminology applied to this phenomenon, whether the glass cliff or waterfall,⁶ identifies and reinforces the significant dropout rate of women 10–15 years into their careers. The attrition rate has a staggering impact on business performance; Cascio (2006) estimated a direct replacement was likely to cost 150–200 per cent of the salary of a skilled individual.⁷ If we measure the cost of churn as the number of people lost, multiplied by the costs of direct replacement, the numbers really ramp up when we consider the loss of women along the pipeline.

Figure 1.2 shows the attrition rate of women from graduate entry to C-Suite level.

The figures are likely to be even higher when we include the indirect costs associated with staff turnover, which may involve accrued paid time off and the costs associated with finding a replacement – not to mention loss of productivity during the transition period. In Chapter 5, we will discuss the reasons and challenges faced by organizations and how to engender a strong and transparent championing culture.

FIGURE 1.2 Attrition rate of women from graduate entry to C-Suite level

Source: ©Zenger Folkman 2009.⁸

H is for Hesitation

When constructing the CHAMP model, we questioned the inclusion of hesitation, primarily because of its negative connotations. Having considered the obvious implications, we knew that to remove it would be to ignore the very root of what really holds women back. We know that despite cultural differences, on the whole there are similar reasons why women hold back and the impact it has on leadership opportunities. In Chapter 3, we discuss the behaviors and implications of women hesitating to step into leadership spaces and identify some really powerful ways forward.

Hesitancy to step up for roles is due to a combination of things. The much-cited Hewlett Packard internal report states that men will apply for a job if they tick 60 per cent of the criteria (experience and qualifications), whereas women will only apply if they align with 100 per cent of the characteristics. Work by Tara Mohr in 2014 followed up on these statistics by surveying over a thousand American professionals, both men and women, to determine whether there were gender differences in attitudes towards applying for jobs when they did not meet all the qualifications.⁹ Her research showed 15 per cent of the women stated they were following guidelines, in contrast to 8 per cent of the male respondents. In addition, just over a fifth of the women (22 per cent) stated they did not want to put themselves out there if they were likely to fail.

We can see why hesitancy is a big piece in leadership and why women need more transparency to understand how the game is being played. We share these examples later on in the book. Sheryl Sandberg’s call for women to “Lean In” is a direct response to their hesitation in the work-place, which has most certainly resulted in an avalanche of activity.¹⁰

Champions need to be adept at recognizing hesitation and handling it, particularly when women are feeling stretched or are at vulnerable points in their careers – for example, a move to a new region, returning after maternity leave, changing roles, or changing teams. Throughout this book, we discuss a variety of reasons why extremely talented and capable women say no to opportunities. In our discussions we have some fantastic examples where women initially said no and their champions convinced them, in a supportive manner, to say yes.

There is another form of hesitancy we want to call out at this stage and this is amongst champions themselves. Taking on a championing role is a strong commitment to promoting human talent and leveling out the playing field. Championing is far more effective when it is transparent and the norm within an organization. If it remains secretive it falls p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The CHAMP Model
• 2 Women in Leadership – What’s Going On?
• 3 Barriers to Progress: Confidence and Bias
• 4 Why Championing Works So Well for Women
• 5 Getting Ready for Championship
• 6 Developing the Championing Relationship
• 7 Creating a Brand Worth Championing
• 8 The Power of Championing: Unleashing the Power of Female Leaders
• 9 Case Studies
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Notes and References
• Index