Choose to Challenge: Inspiring Female Leadership on International Women’s Day

From Facebook to Visa, an ever-growing number of the world’s leading organisations are becoming increasingly vocal and transparent in their intention to close the gap on gender inequality within leadership.

In recognition of International Women’s Day, we at KnowledgeBrief are highlighting the benefits which can be accrued from championing female leadership within our place of work and providing practical recommendations on how you can choose to challenge the status quo and do your part to help inspire a female leadership revolution.

What does female leadership bring to our business?

Cognitive Diversity
Cognitive diversity is one of the key elements that women bring to leadership teams. Creating a balance in positions allows for the generation of new ideas and opportunities to look at issues from differing perspectives. We know that diverse teams are more innovative. In studies on “collective intelligence” (a team’s ability to perform specific tasks), groups with more female members scored higher. Much of this is attributed to women’s top scores on “social sensitivity”, or the awareness of social context and clues that facilitate better group working.

Leadership Styles
This extrapolates in chosen leadership style and impact: women are rated significantly higher in desirable characteristics like idealised influence, inspirational motivation, and individualised consideration making them more adept at utilising a transformational leadership style. Women also tend to exhibit a variety of positive behaviours like the ability to foster cooperative language and prioritise participative communication due to their self-construal (how an individual sees themselves) which allow them to more frequently adopt relational leadership styles.

The Bottom Line
The impact women leaders make in the workplace isn’t just related to ways of working or “soft skills”; there is a tangible effect on the bottom line. Company profits and share performance can be close to 50% higher when women are well represented at the top. Gender diversity leads to a better market value and higher revenue, but interestingly only in places where there is a widespread cultural belief that it is important.

Recommendations
If we are to truly reap the benefits associated with championing a culture of strong and influential female leadership, it is crucial we work toward creating the conditions which will enable us to identify and nurture the next generation of inspirational women leaders.

1. Review your review processes: Ensure that female leadership-relevant competencies and behavioural indicators are included in 360 degree and other leadership assessment tools. Try to eliminate items which prioritise characteristics more commonly associated with male leaders.
2. Set clear targets: Have clear goals and objectives linked to gender diversity. Demonstrate full transparency in your intention to increase the number of female leaders within your business and set clear actions and quantifiable targets in relation to this objective.
3. Be vocal: It is up to you to be a voice for change. Be vocal in highlighting inequalities you may be aware of in the organisation or sector regarding the absence of visibility or opportunity for female leaders to thrive. In addition, use your voice to share your own stories of female leadership success.
4. Educate and challenge stereotypes: Do not allow your organisation to fall victim lazy, inaccurate, or quite frankly untruthful stereotypes. Endeavour to actively educate your working teams toward understanding the merits of female leaders and the importance of equality.
5. Be inspirational: Lead by example and work to actively guide and inspire the next generation of female leaders within your place of work.

This International Women’s Day, challenge yourself and your company to look internally and deeply consider the importance of gender diversity. Then, do something about it.