AndrewWomen & Leadership
Maggie Mzumara
Some companies are more committed than others to promote women into higher positions.
he world over, organisations that have many women in top leadership positions deliberately have a commitment to ensure women rise to the top.
However, some companies are quite lackadaisical about it. And this shows.
Many organisations just pay lip service to this cause but do not take the necessary practical steps to action and implement.
For a company to demonstrate solid commitment, a number of actions that denote such a determination need to be undertaken and demonstrated at different levels.
Here is how.
Board level
When the board sits to discuss their promotion or succession plans (yes, serious companies have and discuss succession plans), they must comb through their human resource to determine if they have proportionate gender representation.
If the pool is gender disproportionate, this could be a red flag.
Also, this could be an indication that the other gender is perhaps not receiving enough advice and preparation or capacitation to make them ready for upward mobility.
This must be sufficiently interrogated.
If it is the case that the company — whether deliberately or somehow unintentionally – is grooming men but not women, or is content with a situation where only the men make it to leadership positions, then there would be need to address the source of the problem.
CEO Level
Chief executive officers must always ask this question: “What are we going to do about ensuring that they are promotable women in the pipeline ready and capable of moving up?”
This would help direct and add muscle to a commitment to do something about this, if at all the commitment exists.
Human resources level
Human resources executives must ensure that they note and emphasise the fact that the other gender is missing in the pool (if it is, that is).
They must also help devise capacitation programmes as part of efforts to address the anomaly where it exists.
Managers Level
Managers must interrogate the mindsets held within the company about women and men insofar as that has a bearing on career development prospects.
This is supposed to ensure there is a level playing field for everyone.
Should anything stand out about the mindsets, then this must be addressed.
Women level
Women looking to rise to the top should be proactive about it and should, therefore, look into and take advantage of capacitating themselves, including developing confidence and assertive skills.
They should also learn the art of self-promoting. Why? Because men self-promote all the time.
Speaking at TEDx Tacoma — an annual event in the US where the region’s greatest minds share ideas — one Gail Romero advised that women looking to get ahead in the leadership pipeline should consider the GLEAN method.
Glean is an abbreviation for the following:
G for Global Mindset — Women should have a global mindset. Should seek to have the big picture, not just a localised piece view of the business or themselves.
L for Leadership Quotient — This is about the ability to lead self, lead others and to even lead leaders.
E for Ethics — Goes without saying that an ethical conduct counts.
A for Agility thinking — This is opposed to the linear kind of thinking which is rigid and lacks creativity and flexibility. Where linear thinking says that you go from Point A to B, to C, D and so on, in that order, agility thinking provides that one can do A, B skip C and D, go to E, do K and J at the same time, in any order actually, just as long as you can get to Z. A rigid kind of thinking is self-limiting and not always practical. Flexibility, creativity and adaptability in thinking and in finding solutions and strategies that work in an above board manner can make a difference in one’s delivery. It can distinguish one better than others.
N for Negotiation and Communication Skills — It goes without saying that for one to make it to the top, they must have negotiating and communication skills which are more advanced than basic.
Maggie Mzumara is a media, communication and leadership consultant. She is a strong advocate for women’s leadership and is founder of Success in Stilettos (SiS) Seminar Series, a leadership development platform for women. She is a diversity trainer and unconscious bias trainer. She can be reached at [email protected] or followed on Twitter @magsmzumara
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