I had the opportunity to interact with a group of 150+ women leaders in various roles and at different stages of their careers at the WILL conference in Mumbai last week.
I now understand how it feels to be one of 3 women surrounded by suited, stuffy, macho, aggressive, loud men in a typical corporate meeting!! Here I was in a reverse situation... I was one of 3 men… you get the picture!
Very lively debate on mentorship…It was a much talked about and much researched topic. A common view was that every company should have a program that has some sort of broad mentorship objective.
But in my view, as you go to more senior levels, it’s not so much about mentorship as it is about sponsorship. The key is - do you have sponsors? Is there someone who will bet on you to do the critical and visible role? This is needed irrespective of gender for sure. But does it happen as easily in the case of women?
My experience and data suggests that it happens less for women. There will be lots of people who will mentor and coach but much fewer who will take that big swing and stake their reputation on that person’s performance.
We need more "sponsors" for women, just as every successful male leader will tell you that they have always had one or two leaders who have visibly bet on them
The question to answer and worth debating is why don’t women have enough sponsors? Maybe it is biases, maybe it is an assumption that the person is not ready for the next big job, maybe some people view it as higher risk. Whatever it is, it has to be fixed. There are no silver bullets… but I think visible sponsorship at leadership levels may be one!!
What do you think?
As far as I understand the reason for which women dont have enough sponsership is that not all the women are flexible as men do, they have their own constraints,responsiblities and limitations, again it depends on the cultural difference aswell.
ReplyDeleteI think that the sponsorship for the diverse profiles overall is a subconcious bias issue. However, I believe that at least for women associates the bias is fast degrading
ReplyDeleteI think for the women juggling between personal and professional responsibilites sometimes is the reason, and most of the times personal responsibilties taking over the professional. As women we are expected to be home makers, so we have to maintain that balance between professional and personal life unlikely men who have very less constraints and responsibilties as home maker. So the need of sponsorship is more for the women.. In most of the surveys it has been cleared found that women have performed very well in leadership roles and coneecting with the people...:-)
ReplyDeleteI would like to commThough this is a never ending story I would like to comment on this topic again,according to my understanding women are the best workforce,but with the exposure i have i think that the gender bias is seen everywhere ,though you work or not visibility matters and the discrimination is still on ,I have seen many gentlemen who come spend their weekends in office. If we say the working hrs are 8 , on weekends I bet that 5hrs they are idle,but this is not highlighted,the only thing thts projected is that they worked on weekends.But I personally feel that women are giving a tough competition in completing the targets in limited timelines which is commendable .I hope the talent should be measured based on the quality of work people do but not the quantity of time they spent apart from working hrs.ent on this again
ReplyDeleteI think that reason that women don't have enough sponsorship is simply because we don't ask for it. We assume that in time if we work hard enough and make enough sacrifices that we will earn respect and trust and that eventually someone will take a risk and be willing to put their name on the line for us. Women should speak up and waive their hands and say, "Pick me, take a risk on me, I am your winner, your champion that will make great things happen". Everyone in life deserves a chance but we as women have to be fearless to know that we are confident and capable of delivering and executing results and that we are worthy and will not let ourselves down and the people that are willing to take a risk on us.
ReplyDeleteBravo! finally a comment that hit it right on. Absolutely true - women don't ask for recognition, they wait for it. The general belief that the system is fair to all keeps us from asking for attention. Stand up women - ASK for attention - it is not wrong. Stand your moral ground, do it the right way. When you are the first woman, remember, your performance no longer represents you, you are setting the ground work for what's to follow. Demonstrate courage and performance - we have it.
DeleteBravo! finally a comment that hit it right on. Absolutely true - women don't ask for recognition, they wait for it. The general belief that the system is fair to all keeps us from asking for attention. Stand up women - ASK for attention - it is not wrong. Stand your moral ground, do it the right way. When you are the first woman, remember, your performance no longer represents you, you are setting the ground work for what's to follow. Demonstrate courage and performance - we have it.
DeleteCouldn't agree more!!
ReplyDeleteAgree very much. Diversity has become close to my heart over the years, apologies ahead for the long comment below!
ReplyDeleteIn 1999 when I returned to India after having lived elsewhere for many years, the then Head of HR at GE Capital, K Murali offered me a flextime role – I could not have done a full time role at the time…family priorities.
And if flextime hadn’t come along, my career may have died a slow (or maybe a really quick!) death...that wasn’t all, when I was ready from a family perspective, Murali 'sponsored' me for a manager role (for sn interview) with GECIS (now GENPACT)...I was fairly junior at the time.
In the 3 years I worked at GECIS thereafter, I had 5 flextime interviewers working for me. Made hiring very scalable, flexible and hence, cost-effective.
If you found Tiger’s blog interesting, you may like the below as well...
http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2010/08/women-are-over-mentored-but-un.html#
http://hbr.org/2010/09/why-men-still-get-more-promotions-than-women/ar/1?referral=00134#
Would also like to share re a wonderful course I was recently exposed to (and will soon be teaching)…aimed at having people not just embrace and be comfortable with diversity of all kinds (gender, geography, culture, age...) but also to encourage...and provide an environment flexible enough to support this.
And as a result, actually leverage diversity to benefit personal and business performance.
Like they say, if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters... :)
I would define diversity in a more broad sense as well though, other than women: employees much younger/older than most, people not so good with expressing themselves in English (or whatever the language of biz in their location), people of color/or without (!) depending on who/where you are, cultural/behavioral differences, people who dress differently, (and sometimes I can barely stand people who don’t appreciate the music I do!!)...guess the list could go on...
And any of these individuals could feel the way Tiger and his 2 men-colleagues felt in the room that day.
In essence we all apparently have trouble connecting with and trusting people different from ourselves...in any way.
And instead of hedging by surrounding ourselves by (hiring, in org terms) people different from ourselves, we do just the opposite! We many times hire in our image. And we take on tremendous risk...of 'org think', becoming 'group think' really.
Also agree with Denise's comments...while ideally we should all support diversity, it is also, to some extent the responsibility of the 'diverse person' to win trust, prove themselves and to stand up and ask for what they think they believe are good for. We need to be our own sponsors first...else no one else will be!
Believe me, all of us are diverse in our own way, in different environments…and possibly that difference in thought, style, actions etc is what we will bring to the table.
So if we think we will add value to that job, we need to win that sponsorship not wait for it… If it is partly the responsibility of our environment, and partly ours, we need to ensure we have done justice to ourselves by doing our bit…at min.
Cheers everyone! And good luck!
Check this video...answers some of the questions raised in your post..
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few_women_leaders.html
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I totally agree, women have so many responsibilities towards their family and society as well. Though we can see many powerful women in Corporate world, but the ratio is not satisfactory. We need to follow Integrity more strictly and provide every women a platform they need to prove themselves. The right amount of exposure is very important for every individual on planet, it helps them grow, and when people grow the oragnization grows eventually.
ReplyDelete