Location: Home > Publications >The leadership Challenge: Women in Management (Hannah Piterman © March 2008)
11. The Diversity Challenge
11.1 Strategies for leadership
Achieving greater female presence within the senior echelons of business presents significant challenges to leadership. At its heart lies a realignment of business values and practices. Optimising the performance and the value of half the potential workforce requires a new and fresh approach. Truly embracing diversity requires challenging organisational culture at the deepest level and 'naming the problem with no name' (Meyerson & Fletcher, 2000: 135).
I actually think that 'thought diversity' and 'cultural diversity'... is the hardest to hold, it's the hardest to define and the hardest to create policy to support because it's insidious and like a lot of prejudice or bigoted value...it's hidden. (Male senior manager)
Leaders must embark on a process of creating and leveraging awareness around the principles and values of diversity in business. A fundamental review of the corporate leadership paradigm is required in order to shift models of authority away from a narrow, technical, short-termism that rewards some men and isolates most women. Leadership expectations need to be made explicit throughout management ranks, drilled down through organisations, and underpinned by specific performance indicators and organisational incentives that change behaviours.When women, behaving as women, achieve results, an organisation can begin to see the benefits of cultural change and new styles of leadership gain currency.
I think the macro issues require people to have a 'Road to Damascus' understanding, to bring people into organisations who already understand it or get it or to have an imperative in your business that requires change to be fundamentally part of what you do. But I do think it's quite hard to do it just through the logic. People get the logic but don't change their behaviour. (Female senior manager)
A number of organisations in Australia are engaging with the diversity challenge.However, most organisations have yet to facilitate cultural change that supports women at senior levels. In the small number of organisations where there is a critical mass of women at senior level, women can strive to leadership positions.
When I was at [department A], that was pretty tough and pretty much a male-dominated environment. For me, it would be a lot harder as a female to get through the senior ranks than at [department B], where half the leadership team is female ... which you don't generally see at that level of the organisation.That gives me comfort that there is an opportunity to excel and advance as a female in that particular part of the organisation. (Female manager)
If you get enough change, then you get re-interpretation. (Female senior manager)
At the broadest level, the diversity challenge requires leadership on a grand scale. Raising awareness, identifying change, and putting policy into practice is a leadership enterprise. While change has commenced, its focus has been on helping women adapt and assimilate into the dominant male culture, or accommodating their needs through flexible work practices. These strategies have produced success at the margin only.
Creating change involves a paradigm shift to align leadership with a female presence. It requires an ongoing conversation between men and women with a vision for the future. While men increasingly register support for inclusion of women, barriers to female progression are not being addressed (Carlson, et. al. 2006).
Gender remains a defining dimension of modern organisations. But the changes required in our future organisations call for something beyond gender diversity at the top. It calls for future leaders with a perceptive and reflective mindset about 'difference' in the workplace to complement their traditional skills and experiences in maximising stakeholder gain.This is a tough but worthy mission for tomorrow's business executive who can lead change. (Spearritt, 1999: 47)
11.2 The honest conversation
The 'honest conversation' between men and women needs to begin to raise awareness of the subtle inhibiters to women's experience in the workplace.This conversation needs to address both the source of gender inequity and its symptoms. It needs to transcend rhetoric and political correctness. A safe environment for the airing of taboo topics should be established. This should not be limited to corporate hotlines for unethical behaviour. It requires active and sustained programs to service and challenge assumptions, values, and behaviours. The discussion needs to focus on culture, leadership, gender relations, and work/life balance.
The big thing is you've got to talk about it because it exists...you need to find the men who can start the conversations that get the organisation thinking about it. (Male senior manager)
Dialogue needs to take place at the most senior levels to identify everyday practices that constitute barriers to the retention of women employees and their capacity to move to leadership positions. Organisations need to make explicit the 'norms that silently support gender inequity' (Meyerson & Fletcher, 2000: 132). In order to achieve and maintain significant progress, organisations need to identify, discuss and actively address the inhibitors to a positive workplace experience of female executives. These include not only the well-identified structural barriers such as flexibility in working arrangements but the more subtle constraints that stem from deep seated assumptions that lead to gender stereotyping.
11.2.1 Culture
When cultures lose the complementarity of their values a chill wind blows and a strange malaise descends. (Hampden-Turner, 1994)
Culture remains a nebulous notion that encompasses shared patterns of behaviours and interactions that are implicit and hence not available for scrutiny. Much of it is unconscious and subliminal in its expression, and it is held onto with a power that defies logic or common sense (Settel, 2006). The honest conversation needs to create a climate where deeply embedded values and practices can be brought to the fore and examined. What does the term 'male-dominated culture' really mean? How can we begin to unpack and understand it? Only by addressing these questions can organisations hope to uncover blind spots, and address untenable behaviours and deepseated cultural intransigence that have their underpinnings in stereotypical views of gender relations.
This isn't policy as in,'Here is a new policy,we'll have more women'. Its policy as in,'We have to change the dynamic of the way the organisation thinks and feels because that will then enable people to feel more comfortable with diversity of thought, gender, whatever'. It will probably take longer than we all think. (Male senior manager)
Unless the nature of male dominance and its impact on women is unravelled, it cannot be addressed (Spearritt, 1999). This is particularly so in predominantly male, monocultural environments where leadership values, behaviours and perceptions of merit are so deeply ingrained in organisational culture that they undermine policy and procedural interventions to include women. The study finds that both men and women often perceive poor cultural fit as a reason for women's perceived failure in corporate environments.
Assessing for cultural fit is now firmly entrenched into hiring practices. It reflects sound objective judgement (Watt, Busine & Wienker, 2007) and 'reduces the strength of the organisation's antibody rejection' (Michaels, Handfield-Jones, Axelrod, 2001:76). While shrouded in the language of objectivity, there is a subjective dimension to the pursuit of cultural fit. Organisations need to be aware of these subjective dimensions so that pursuing cultural fit does not lead to homogeneity and exclusion.
11.2.2 The face of leadership
The prevailing profile of excellence in business leadership needs to be re-examined. This requires challenging the norms that determine leadership eligibility.
Only by challenging the assumptions on which leadership is based will we be equipped to seriously anticipate the transformation so often promised by leadership. (Sinclair, 2007:33)
What does leadership look like? Who is allowed to lead and why? What traits get selected and why? What traits are seen as incompatible with leadership? Are there drivers that perpetuate a leadership incumbency that excludes females? What is the basis for these drivers? Why do certain models of leadership take hold while others do not? How do organisations cultivate leaders?
While the rhetoric around heroic leadership is increasingly being challenged and team-based cultures are promoted, the study finds that a particular competitive and individualistic masculinity continues to characterise leadership practice. Management is seen as a masculine enterprise dominated by male bodies, male discourse, and male behaviours (Collinson & Hearn, 1996, Chesterman, et. al. 2004; Acker, 1990; Sinclair, 2007).The female presence in leadership is considered complementary. It is valued for the nurturing and caring traits required in team-based structures and dealing with customers. However, it 'fails to challenge effectively either the hierarchical valuing of gender differences or the organisational mechanisms that reproduce them' (Meyerson & Kolb, 2000: 562).
While globalisation has heightened the competitive business dynamic, long-term success in global markets demands leadership that can traverse competitive instincts to shape an organisational culture built on shared interests, mutual obligation, and cooperation.The knowledge economy, in particular, requires a value system that can harness unique talents, skills, and ideas irrespective of how they are packaged. It requires an environment where multiple perspectives can emerge and diversity can thrive, as people feel safe to explore unknown territories, question current assumptions, and propose new approaches to thinking and working together.
What you stand for externally somehow demands an internal energy to shift it... You just need a few evangelists, and energy can be created through individuals. A new CEO can change this completely. You just need to start talking about it... It takes senior people to tell stories...and hold a mirror up to the organisation. (Male senior manager)
Competitive and individualistic models of leadership create dynamics that are self-limiting and unsustainable. They breed a hero mentality that, while lionising incumbents, renders them prisoners of a role, culture, and ambition, that disconnects them from parts of themselves, from their families, and from reality, with potentially destructive consequences (Kets de Vries, 1991, Sinclair, 1994, Krantz, 1998). The heroic leader is welldepicted in the metaphor of 'man as a block of wood' (Biddulf, 1994) that depicts the two-dimensional John Wayne entity of a bygone era, where men's self-definition was based on a fierce independence in which women had no significant part.
Leadership models that thrive on competition and individualism are unsustainable in the face of the complex cross-functional challenges facing the modern economy. They spawn organisational cultures that are exclusionary; that measure success narrowly; that reward few individuals; that lead to information being withheld; and that thwart the creative spirit which is the mainstay of knowledge creation. At the extreme they have been responsible for the corporate collapses in which individuals with omnipotent notions of self bypass governance principals of transparency and accountability.
For a new value system to gain currency, prevailing profiles of excellence in business leadership need to be re-examined.Traits socially ascribed to men such as individualism, control, assertiveness, and skills of advocacy and domination are not drivers of knowledge creation. Raising awareness of more relevant and contemporary management styles and identifying the constraints of gender expectations would facilitate a wider pool of talent to include men and women traditionally not welcome in leadership positions, an opportunity to make a leadership contribution.
Perhaps the courage of creativity is required, perhaps the courage of admission of failure, as opposed to the desire to be right. I think that allows you to be agile in an environment that requires you to be agile. (Male senior manager)
11.2.3 Gender relations
Despite the progress made towards gender equity, entrenched cultural beliefs regarding the roles of men and women in society continue to be played out in organisational life. Organisational systems, work practices, norms, and discourse reflect masculine experiences, masculine values, and men's life situations (Meyerson & Kolb, 2000). This not only limits the quality of work experience for men and women, but it undermines their potential contribution.
Something about the atmosphere and the way people conducted themselves at a senior level, I didn't feel I was with people who had shared values... My main gripe was the highly political nature of the organisation where I felt no matter how good your were or how well you worked with people, it didn't really matter, you wouldn't necessarily get on... I felt it was a very male, macho culture at the senior level that I didn't feel comfortable in. (Female senior manager)
You've got the male saying, 'Give me, give me'...and here I've got someone who is apparently ambivalent but clearly talented. So what do I do? My conditioning tells me to select the male and not the female. (Male senior manager)
In order to address gender inequality in the work place organisations need to examine expectations men and women have of themselves and of one another that perpetuate and reproduce gender inequity. To address stereotypical mindsets, organisations need to ask some of the following questions:
- Do work structures disadvantage women? Work structures include: time of meetings strategic to decisionmaking; the nature of work that is valued and rewarded; occupational segregation between men and women that leaves women in low visibility or low paid jobs or in classic 'women's departments; women's pay and pay rises that are not on a par with men's; and notions of competency that value certain aspects of performance over others (for example, valuing technical competency over behavioural competency).
- Is management a male enterprise? Are managerial attributes aligned with gender stereotypes so that male attributes of endurance, strength, and competitive spirit are given ascendance over female attributes of care, consultation, and team-play. What gets heard and who gets heard is underpinned by a masculine construct of leadership.
- What gets heard? Male discourse determines the agenda items that get attention and those that are undervalued or never make it onto the agenda.
- Who gets heard? A culture dominated by physical masculinity and masculine behaviour impacts the 'look' of success as well as communication styles that are rewarded/punished, and hence who succeeds in terms of promotion and reward. Self-promotion, (an example of behaviour valued in men and derided in women) leads to higher pay. - If work is a male enterprise, is family a female enterprise? There is as assumption that women are responsible for family and that there is a disconnect between family and work.
11.2.4 Work/life balance
To establish a climate that accommodates the flexibility needs of the workforce and optimises the contribution women can make to enterprises, leadership needs to acknowledge the legitimate intersection of work, family, and community interests. Accommodating work/life balance demands a rethink of traditional principles of good business. It requires challenging traditional value systems and introducing new ways of thinking about sustainable workforce planning, social capital, and responsibility to community.
In this organisation we actually have these two themes that we run...two particular strands that reflect the sort of organisation we are. Those streams are around our business or policy objective and the other theme is caring for people. So we actually believe they're not exclusive, they're actually things that work together to achieve the business outcome. (Male senior manager)
The 24/7 culture and its repercussions need to be squarely located as a business and social agenda as workplace sustainability issue.The impact on men and women and their families cannot be ignored as health, relationships, and community are affected.There are limits to the take up of flexibility opportunities when the structure of business remains locked in a mindset that privileges work life over private life and structures. Devising strategies to assist women juggle family and work, goes some of the way to assist women, but does not address the wider implications of structure of work that remains locked in a traditional heritage that sees gendered segregation of roles.
With more sophisticated mobile and electronic technologies virtual work places can now exist in cafes and lounge rooms, blurring the boundary between work and non work.This creates difficulty when negotiating private life as the separation between private and public life becomes increasingly opaque, particularly at senior level when work relationships slip into the personal.This highlights and exacerbates the gendered consequences of a 24/7 culture that work against many women, who choose to maintain boundaries between work and home. Indeed the 24/7 culture impinges on choices both men and women make.
To be honest with you, I don't think it would be possible [to have children] to do what we do... when both of us are at full throttle and that does impact our domestic life. Simple stuff like dry cleaning, shopping.When we are both working 12, 14 hours a day, those things suffer.” (Male senior manager)
Leadership needs to address basic assumptions that underpin the 24/7 culture. It needs to address the rhetoric of work life balance that does not reflect the day to day reality that sees commitment to work being judged by long hours spent at the workplace, by responsiveness to work demands when not at work, and by the interplay of public and private life that sees leisure, family, and work progressively intertwined. Leadership needs to interrogate the notion of flexible work options when performance is often judged by the capacity to meet unrelenting workplace demands that see women, in particular, working to all hours in the morning to meet deadlines. Flexibility needs to be a tool that assists women (and men) to make choices about work and family. Choosing flexible work options should not see women juggling impossible demands.
Flexibility needs to be incorporated into mainstream organisational life if it is to transcend tokenism. Flexibility needs to be treated as a strategic intervention designed to enhance organisations' capacity and the maximisation of talent contribution. If policy is to move from rhetoric to practice, the introduction of flexibility options must be incorporated into mainstream corporate life and supported by management.This requires leadership to challenge cultural attitudes and practices that are intransigent and indeed discriminatory and to support a clear and unambiguous case for the uptake of flexibility.
11.3 Taking action
As part of a concerted effort by senior leadership to raise awareness of inhibitors to women's work experience and to enhance women's promotional opportunity, senior management needs to commit to on the ground initiatives that see diversity incorporated in core business activity. Such initiatives include:
- collect data to assess the contribution of flexible workplace options to the bottom line, and to measure the opportunity cost of under-utilisation and of failure to attract and retain women, and establish risk mitigation strategies; • pursue diversity initiatives as a core element in business strategy. Incorporate diversity as a key performance indicator through the business, such that managers are accountable for linking diversity with business outcomes;
- facilitate flexible working arrangements that set realistic deliverables. In particular, take action to address deeply seated assumptions that align diversity initiatives with negative business outcomes, as exemplified by part-time work being associated with less commitment;
- seek interventions to enhance the attractiveness of traditional male industries to executives (men and women) with families through the provision of flexible and family friendly working conditions;
- provide women with opportunities to take up mainstream leadership in operational roles and support and mentor them in those roles in the same way as men get mentored. In particular, manage the early stages of this initiative when women are visible and potentially vulnerable to undue scrutiny such that a mistake is construed as a failure rather than a learning opportunity;
- identify development opportunities and facilitate use of mentors for women through successive stages of their career;
- enforce appropriate management behaviours and standards that address professional inclusion, meeting dynamics, and communications and language protocols. These should be role-modelled at the most senior levels and every opportunity should be made to communicate standards and behaviours through the organisation;
- seek the achievement of a 'critical mass' of women in management positions to avoid isolation, maintain confidence, encourage emerging women leaders, and limit minority/majority dynamics; and
- recognise that cultural change initiatives may be resisted by both men and women. Manage the resistance through ongoing communication and awareness raising while moving ahead.
11.4 Conclusion
The demands of the global economy have seen an intersection of the business and ethical case for change.The ethical case for equal opportunity, while afforded the protection of legislation has not been able to make inroads into deeply rooted cultural practices. Leadership can no longer afford to stand by while talented individuals are denied opportunities.Today's networked, interdependent, culturally diverse organisations require a leadership presence that is able to harness the collective intelligence, creativity, and imagination, of employees at all levels. 'We must take the risk, because there is none' (McFarlane 2004:20).