What are the benefits to men of having women in more leadership positions?
"Many of us women want to be self-sufficient, many of us women want to contribute to creating better lives for our children, trying to open up the best opportunities for them, to the best of our ability. Melinda Gates
Women and Organizational Leadership in LA. The reality in the Latin American context is that leadership positions are mostly held by men. Although women in Latin America represent 53% of new hires, only 14% of women are part of an executive committee and less than 4% of women are general managers or are part of a board of directors.
What is common among women. Years ago when I visited Guatemala to learn first-hand about the work of a social entrepreneur, she took me into the mountains, and there indigenous and illiterate women shared their dreams with me. Their dreams were the same as those mentioned by Melinda Gates, perhaps explaining why research shows that women invest up to ten times more than men in their family's well-being.
I have worked with women in several countries in coaching and mentoring relationships, and as a trainer and teacher; additionally, I try to balance my career with raising my children, so women's dilemmas are not foreign to me. My conclusion is that although at first glance our lives seem different, women have a lot in common.
Women's saboteurs. According to research by INCAE professor Susan Clancy and Facebook CFO Sheryl Sandberg, we women tend to underestimate our abilities and men tend to overestimate them; even the most capable, educated, and well-off women in the world tend to have this behavior in terms of the confidence and assertiveness they collectively project.
What top-tier organizations around the world are doing to be more equitable. I was reading in the New York Times, that Harvard Business School professors are measuring through software how aspects of gender influence the way teachers facilitate student participation. Many HBS professors noticed, after using the software, that they tended to give the floor more often to male students regardless of class size and composition (even in classrooms where there were more women as a percentage). The Harvard model, like that of INCAE, uses class participation to have an important weight in the final grade; therefore, the finding pointed to the fact that professors tend to unconsciously favor male students, not only in participation but also in grades.
James Harrington said: " If you can't measure something, you can't understand it", and it is clear that if a problem is not understood, it will be very difficult to correct it.
At the organizational level, companies could learn from Harvard, using objective measures of performance evaluation, and objective measures for recruiting, selecting and promoting their talent regardless of gender.
Benefits to men of having women in more leadership positions*. I write not only for women (I have discussed in other posts why it makes organizational sense to have women in leadership positions), but also for men's personal and professional lives. Here are some benefits for men when female leadership is encouraged.
*Source of these benefits: observing reality and summarizing the findings of various sites.
Likewise, organizations' access to mentoring and coaching programs, and working to reduce perfectionism, are steps that can be taken in a more positive direction to strengthen women's leadership.
And you, man, woman, boss, manager, father or mother, how much are you leveraging the talent available to you?
