by Lester Coupland
Women's Leadership: What Exactly Are We Trying to Fix?
Recently, I was invited to facilitate two focus groups comprising current and aspiring women leaders.
The purpose of the sessions, which were held in Riyadh, was to identify the key challenges and needs facing women leaders in Saudi Arabia.
Some women expressed that they were perceived as not being ‘dependable or competent’ to perform at a senior level, which left them lacking in confidence and feeling that they were “not good enough.’’
The importance of acquiring soft skills (such as emotional intelligence, influencing and feedback) was highlighted by some.
Self-awareness and learning more about themselves and how they were perceived by others within their team (and the organisation as a whole) was also a key theme to emerge.
Networking opportunities were also considered important; without networking groups, many felt that Saudi women would not be able to support and learn from one another or build stronger peer-to-peer networks. In fact, networking groups were also seen as vital to increasing confidence, particularly when operating at senior levels.
On reflection, all of these challenges and needs reminded me of an insight I learned from Professor Sue Vinnicombe (1) at Cranfield University in the UK. Sue conveyed to me (and countless others) that it wasn’t about teaching women to be more like men; it wasn’t about fixing the women. It was about fixing organisations.
Here at LSC, our own experience of working with global clients has shown us that organisational culture is everything. In the now-famous words of Peter Drucker, ‘’culture eats strategy for breakfast.’’ We may formulate the most attractive strategies for women’s career progression; we may showcase our plans for women’s leadership aspirations. But implementing these will depend to a large extent upon the organisation’s core beliefs, values and processes; and, perhaps most crucial of all, the mindset, behaviours and commitment of the senior leadership team.
(1) Sue is Professor of Women and Leadership at Cranfield University, where she specialises in helping organisations accelerate the careers of their top female talent and improve gender diversity in their corporate governance.
If your organisation is reflecting on how to create a more inclusive and effective leadership culture, there are programmes designed to support that transformation.
