Blog | Page 9 | Ali Levin

Year after year, the case for promoting women gets stronger. In 2019 a study by Zegner Folkman published in the Harvard Business Review found that women outperform men in 17 of 19 leadership competencies, including, among many others, initiative, resilience, and integrity.

In 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic, the world watched as those countries that were led by women (New Zealand, Germany, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Taiwan) experienced far fewer deaths than those led by men, Zegner Folkman repeated the study. Women scored even higher this time than men in leadership competencies.

Yet in 2021 only 8.2% of Fortune 500 CEOs were women. And women of color held only 1% of CEO positions across the Fortune 1000. Despite the fact that companies know that promoting women is good for business, we still have a long way to go. So let’s take every opportunity to remind as many people as we can about the benefits of having women in leadership roles.

Women are great people managers.

When I first started designing and directing leadership development programs at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, I remember having an AHA moment and asking my partner and co-designer, “are we basically teaching men to be more like women?”

The reason that I asked is that the research repeatedly shows that women know how to motivate, inspire and develop employees. In her book “The Authority Gap,” Mary Ann Sieghart shares research showcasing the many ways in which women are better at people management. They mentor, empower and encourage employees to develop their full potential far more successfully than men. Women in leadership positions build trust on their teams and create the psychological safety necessary for others to contribute their views. They are also more likely to use rewards for good performance. These are some of the key leadership competencies we teach.

Recently, Gallup provided its State of the American Manager report in which they surveyed 27 million employees. Gallup found that those who work for a woman are 26% more likely than those who work for a man to strongly agree that, “There is someone at work who encourages my development,” and 29% more likely to strongly agree that, “in the last six months someone at work has talked to me about my progress.” We know that one of the biggest factors leading to greater engagement at work by employees is their belief that their manager encourages them and helps them grow in their roles.

Importantly, while both men and women report being more engaged with female bosses, the biggest gap is between women who work for women (35% engaged) and men who work for men (only 25% engaged). Overall the Gallup report says, “female managers eclipse their male counterparts at setting basic expectations for their employees, building relationships with their subordinates, encouraging a positive team environment and providing employees with opportunities to develop within their careers.”

Organizations facing the Great Resignation may want to take a deeper look at who holds positions of leadership in their organization and how good they really are at people management. My suggestion is to promote more women.

There is a strong business case for promoting women.

Catalyst, an organization dedicated to fostering workplaces that work for women, recently shared the vast body of research that documents the relationship between diversity and improved financial performance. McKinsey looked at more than 1,000 large companies in 15 countries, and found that the most gender diverse companies were 25% more likely to earn above average profits than the ones with very few women. Researchers from the Peterson Institute for International Economics conducted a global survey of financial and governance data from over 20,000 firms in 91 countries and found a positive correlation between women in senior leadership and profitability. These are just two examples from the research that make the business case.

It is more than just about financial performance, however. Diverse organizations are more successful at recruiting and retaining talent. This is a strategic imperative for businesses that want to scale. Catalyst shares research that includes:

Companies with higher levels of gender diversity and HR policies that focus on diversity are linked to lower levels of turnover;
Employees experiencing inclusion at work are considerably more likely to be engaged and less likely to leave; and
Organizations with strong diversity climates see a significant increase in employee job satisfaction and commitment to the company.

Employee engagement is a huge predictor of organizational success and getting to gender balance in leadership is a proven way to improve engagement and financial success.

Diverse teams make better decisions.

Finally, there is strong evidence that more diverse teams make better decisions, even if it feels harder at the time. Homogeneity is easier. When we see the world the same way, we don’t need to debate or innovate because we all agree. But easier is not better.

Companies want teams that are creative, innovative and open. Research by the Boston Consulting Group shows that all of this improves with gender diversity. For example, the study found that companies with the greatest gender diversity (defined as 8 out of every 20 managers being female) generated about 34% of their revenues from innovative products and services. This number reduced to 25% for companies that had only 1 out of every 20 managers being female.

Diversity also reduces groupthink, which is the practice of making decisions in a way that discourages creativity because there is pressure to all agree and be alike. Teams that include different viewpoints and thinking styles solve problems faster, more innovatively and produce better intellectual property.

Of course this too requires work. When teams are comprised of individuals who are different, they must cultivate a shared understanding of the team’s diversity and its positive benefits to the group performance. This includes openness to different ideas and experiences, and work climates that value diversity. When this happens, teams learn to listen to one another and challenge each other to grow. This inclusivity greatly enhances the team’s performance.

There is a double bonus to this as well. Teams that work together to foster climates of inclusiveness are doing exactly what is required to create psychological safety. That is the belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. And research is proving time and again that psychological safety is also one of the most important predictors of a team’s, and therefore an organization’s, success.

Promote the Women

The evidence is clear. Having more women in leadership positions is better for people, business and decision-making. Yet, we are asked, repeatedly, to make the case for getting to gender balance. The amount of research that banks, consultancies, investors and organizations continue to do to prove this point is, frankly, getting absurd. Nonetheless, change is slow and hard and like so many other things, women find themselves having to prove their contribution with data that is not required of men. Be that as it may, you have the evidence to demonstrate to your organization that the more women promoted into management positions, the more likely the organization is to succeed.

I did not expect to be writing about what Covid taught me. My teenage daughter and I made it 18-months without getting Covid. We took every precaution and were vaccinated when, two-days after a Thanksgiving trip to Boston, we tested positive for Covid-19. Given this may be true for so many others, I thought I would share four tips that helped us cope with Covid – or that may be useful in any other unpredictable, anxiety producing event.

1. Cultivate calm

I’m super big on self-care and doing everything possible to stay calm – morning meditations, daily long walks with my dogs, yoga, journaling, meeting with my coach, and checking in with my therapist. Yet none of that helped when I got Covid. The anxiety was real. So imagine where I might have been without everything I was already doing to stay calm…

A few months ago, I established a morning meditation routine after a conversation with my coach about an overall sense of unsettledness that I was experiencing. Each morning, I tune into my body to determine what I feel like I need. Sometimes, I just breathe, sometimes I repeat a mantra (“I surrender” is a really good one for me), and sometimes I choose a guided meditation from the Insight Timer app.

Morning meditations have helped me to start my day from a place of calm and they have also helped me to be more present for my work and for my clients. Meditating helps me make healthier choices and to return regularly to operating from a place of abundance.

But I hadn’t been closing my days with meditation. In fact, most of my days ended with me, on the couch, watching TV. The onset of Covid had me tossing and turning at night, and going deep into the web with questions like: “Will I ever smell again?” “Will this ringing in my ears ever stop?” “Does my teenager’s asymptomatic Covid mean she can’t get long covid?” And many more. But guess what? Googling that shit makes it worse.

This taught me to now end my days with more meditation. We can’t hear it too many times, we only have the present. When I feel anxious, I’m ruminating over what happened or stressing about what might happen and none of that makes me feel any better. The present makes me feel better.

When you hear that noise in your head and that chaotic buzz in your body, maybe because of Covid or maybe just because – sit in a chair, ground your feet to the earth, and focus your attention on your body. Breathe your energy down and drop the noise and the buzz into the earth. Make space for the fear, and witness it, but try to let go of controlling it.

One of my favorite poems in the world is called, Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. In the poem, she says, “you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” I repeat that over and over until I feel calm.

2. Take nothing for granted

This is my first experience with the loss of one of my senses and it is disorienting. I’m one of the people for whom Covid meant losing the sense of smell. I fried tofu with garlic, spring onions, shallots, ginger, szechuan pepper, red chilis and black pepper. Smell: zero. Taste: nothing.

Lately, I’ve been practicing trying to smell again, training my brain to remember what things smell like. I’ve chosen a few scents that are strong and familiar to practice with, and more importantly, I’m paying attention and feeling grateful for what is available to me: sight, sound and touch. I notice that as I appreciate those things more, they fill me with a sense of gratitude for what I do have. And the act of working to smell again, grounds me in the present.

Gratitude may seem like an overused word these days, but if we say it alot, it’s because it matters. When we operate from a place of gratitude, we feel calmer and more connected. We stop racing to get what we don’t have, especially when we’re not sure if we will ever have it again. Instead, we appreciate what we do have.

I’m enjoying books and music more. I’m appreciative of what I can’t smell -–- like the stuff I have to pick up when I walk my dogs. Finding the silver lining really works.

3. Connect. Connect. Connect.

Something about having Covid made me stop and take stock of what I do and how I do it. I am a coach and I teach leadership, so depth of connection has always been critical. However, this has made me feel more deeply.

Strong relationships are the strongest predictor of life satisfaction. Feeling connected to each other and to the purpose in our work is far more important than making money or achieving success. During this time, I have noticed the deep and sustained impact that human connection has on my own sense of wellbeing.

Also because I’ve been isolating, the experience of connecting on Zoom has been a gift rather than a fatigue inducing annoyance. I have looked forward to every session with every client and have been touched more deeply by the power of sitting with people who are working to improve the quality of their lives, their leadership and their contributions.

4. “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers

In Emily Dickinson’s famous poem, hope is the strong-willed bird that sits in each of us and sings no matter what. More recently, Barack Obama talked about hope not as blind optimism, not as ignoring the enormity of what we are all facing, but as the ability to cultivate courage to remake the world as it should be. I have been grateful for science and I continue to have hope. My case of Covid is mild, because I’m vaccinated and because we have made such progress in the last 18-months, and it gives me hope that we will continue to meet the challenges ahead, no matter how big.

This reflective time has taught me that being calm, grateful and connected provides me the foundation to have hope for a better future. With the people I coach, I often talk about positive emotional attractors. When the leaders with whom I work face even bigger challenges and opportunities, I have them visualize it all going well, and I ask, “what do you see?” and “how do you feel it in your body?” From that place, and with this foundation, we rise to meet the challenges of the day, even those we can’t entirely control, like Covid.

The Case for Women Leaders