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 celebrate diversity and create an environment for inclusiveness.
Talent is a combination of passion, competence, and need, which when aligned, can lead to extraordinary results. For example, 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. According to Statistics Canada, in 2022, the proportion of Canadian-born women with a bachelor’s degree was higher than that of Canadian-born men with a bachelor’s degree (41% vs. 27%).
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.
Look to build your teams with diversity in the following areas:
- Emotional Intelligence can look like: Strong interpersonal relationships; social responsibility; empathy; self-regard; and stress tolerance.
- Decision-making approaches: Look for openness, inclusivity, and collaboration.
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, diversity.
• Be transparent about all strategies.
5. Establish mentoring and sponsorship programs.
• Identify top talent and be strategic about assigning mentors and sponsors to accelerate development and retain talent.
6. Language Matters.
• 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.