Lis Merrick explores the most recent innovative practice in mentoring female talent
Women’s presence on the board has been proven to add competitive advantage to a business (Grant Thornton International; Davies Review, both 2015). Yet, despite about the same number of women and men in the workforce, there’s still an imbalance in favour of men in more senior leadership roles.
Over the past two decades, many employers have shown enthusiastic commitment to gender diversity, and women have made enormous strides to compete with men at work. Mentoring and sponsor programmes have been successful in helping erode this gender imbalance and are strongly recommended by research as a major factor in developing more women leaders.
So what’s different now?
Mentoring for women talent is far more focused and sophisticated than 5-10 years ago. Programmes are usually part of a wider strategy to support women and have clearer outcomes, or are built into an overall talent programme with removal of gender bias a key objective.
‘Gender education’ of the mentor is seen as an explicit goal in many ‘women-only’ programmes, with reverse mentoring expected as an outcome in the senior leader, more junior woman relationship. So what else are these focused programmes designed to achieve?
Outcomes for the organisation
As well as increasing the number of female leaders in more senior roles, the two major objectives are to:
- stop holding female leaders up to a higher standard than men, and
- update the outdated business leader stereotype.
Finding a way to support women and men to internalise their own leadership identity is key, but this is very challenging for women, particularly if they operate in a culture unconsciously conflicted about how they should behave and exercise their authority.
The human tendency to move towards a person like us creates a culture of senior men sponsoring and becoming advocates for other men when leadership opportunities arise. If a woman demonstrates less conventional leadership potential, this may not be recognised by the prevailing culture. Without discriminatory intent, a very subtle ‘second generation’ form of gender bias can block women’s bid for leadership. Mentoring can help erode these issues and a well-designed programme will articulate the intended outcomes up front, engaging all participants.
Outcomes for female talent
An effective programme will emphasise that women will be supported to:
- put their hand up for stretch assignments
- push themselves out of their comfort zone
- get their boss to talk to them
- not feel bullied by ‘presenteeism’
- feel comfortable in displaying vertical ambition motivation
- apply for jobs even if they don’t have all the competencies, and
- get that role model to help them.
Changing the structural societal inequalities and attitudes won’t happen overnight. Having one or more mentors offers women a safe space and professional friend to assess their career goals and own view of ambition and desire for power at work. If that mentor and the organisation have a clear focus and awareness of the issues involved in supporting her effectively, you will have a very robust programme in place to support your female talent.
- Next issue: delivering mentoring programmes virtually
- Lis Merrick is a consultant and visiting fellow of the Coaching and Mentoring Research Unit at Sheffield Business School. She welcomes correspondence on anything to do with mentoring. Contact: Lismerrick@coach mentoring.co.uk
References
- Women In Business, Grant Thornton International Business Report 2015
- Women on Boards, Davies Review – Five Year Summary, Oct 2015