Gender Leadership
Reaching your full potential of top talent is not just about competence, but a synergy of passion, competence, and need, yielding extraordinary results. Despite evidence linking gender diversity to financial success, the representation of women in senior positions has declined in the past decade. To harness top talent effectively, leaders must recognize and adapt to gender differences. Here, we outline key gender disparities and offer five strategies to cultivate an environment where all individuals, regardless of gender, can thrive as top talent.
Talent is a combination of passion, competence, and need, which when aligned, can lead to extraordinary results. Research conducted by institutions like Columbia University, McKinsey, and Catalyst underscores the correlation between increased representation of women in senior positions and boards with greater financial success. Despite women earning 57% of all bachelor’s degrees and one-third of business graduate degrees, Statistics Canada reports a decline in the percentage of women in senior positions from 27% to 22% over the past decade. Effective leadership entails understanding and adapting to gender differences to optimize talent engagement and performance, emphasizing the importance of gender-aware leadership practices to cultivate top talent.
Three Key Gender Differences:
- Emotional Intelligence: Women score higher: interpersonal relationships; social responsibility; and empathy. Men score higher: self-regard and stress tolerance.
- Decision-making approach: Women are more open, inclusive and collaborative.
- Flexibility over promotion: Women choose flexibility over promotion more often. Generation X and Y choose flexibility over promotion more often too.
Here are five key strategies to enhance your ability to get people to show up as top talent:
1. Create a culture of accountability for results and behaviours.
• Focus on defining outcomes and creating a culture of accountability for results and behaviours.
2. Foster a more flexible work environment.
• Use a tailored approach to flexibility to get people to show up as top talent.
• Study your competition and listen to your employees.
3. Be transparent and educate.
• Educate all employees on the business case for gender, age, ethnic diversity.
• Be transparent about all strategies.
5. Establish formal mentoring and sponsorship programs.
• Identify top talent and be strategic about assigning mentors and sponsors to accelerate development and retain talent.
• Men still get more promotions than women.
6. Use Power Language.
• Brevity, Action Verbs, Stories, Relevant
• Be inclusive, avoid swearing and inappropriate humour and comments.
Adapted from the book: The Talent Advantage: How to Attract and Retain the Best and the Brightest by coauthors Dr. Alan Weiss and Dr. Nancy MacKay, published by Wiley.