It’s easy to see why companies are interested in increasing their female leadership at the highest levels: the case for gender diversity among corporate leadership is straightforward and compelling. A Morgan Stanley report states that “more gender diversity, particularly in corporate settings, can translate to increased productivity, greater innovation, better decision-making, and higher employee retention and satisfaction.” These are outcomes that nearly any investor would be interested in.
Further, there’s evidence that women are more competent leaders. Leadership experts Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman conducted a study looking at leadership characteristics and found that women scored higher on more leadership competencies than men.
Further, the study found that “women are perceived by their managers — particularly their male managers — to be slightly more effective than men at every hierarchical level and in virtually every functional area of the organization.”
Clearly, women have a lot to offer as leaders of an organization.
Even beyond achieving better business results and better leadership, companies also want to increase the number of women in leadership roles simply because it’s the right thing to do. Because leaders have such an outsized effect on all organizational stakeholders, corporations owe it to their employees, customers and shareholders to put the most competent people possible in leadership positions, whether they’re men or women.
In addition, our economic system strives for meritocratic ideals in which people are promoted and rewarded based on their hard work and abilities rather than their gender or other irrelevant part of their background.
However, despite women’s leadership abilities, they aren’t reaching the top levels of leadership across different sectors. The Center for American Progress released updates to its report on the Women’s Leadership Gap in 2018, which describes the dearth of women in leadership roles across the United States:
- Women are just 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs,
- Women are only 6 percent of all venture capital board representatives,
- Women accounted for just 18 percent of all the directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors who worked on the top-grossing 250 domestic films of 2017, and
- Women represent only 24 percent of members of Congress while women of color represent less than 9 percent of members of Congress.
All of this, despite women being 50.8% of the United States population, earning the majority of bachelor’s degrees and almost 60% of master’s degrees.
For organizations who want to increase gender diversity among its top leadership, the question remains: how can organizations get more women in leadership positions? While the problem is complex and multifaceted, it’s clear that mentoring is a critical piece of the solution.
There are several ways that mentoring helps women get to leadership positions. Here are three key ways:
1. Mentoring helps women gain more confidence
In the Zenger/Folkman study cited earlier, women in their 20’s were found to be significantly less confident in their own abilities compared to men in their 20’s, which wasn’t justified based on their ability levels. Mentoring can help women gain more confidence in a number of ways.
First, mentors can provide feedback to young women, which can help raise their self-assessments to be more in line with their actual levels of competence. Second, when the mentor is a woman herself, women mentees benefit from having a role model they can identify with more closely, which makes it easier for the mentee to see herself in a leadership role in the future.
Also read: The Value of Mentoring Women
2. Mentoring women can change the biases of those in charge
Bias against women, whether conscious or unconscious, continues to be an obstacle for women in their quest for leadership roles. These biases can be challenged when people in leadership roles mentor women, simply from the relationship built between the mentor and the mentee.
Further, organizational policies (such as a lack of maternity leave) may look innocuous and gender-neutral on the surface, but contribute to the hurdles that women must overcome to reach leadership positions. When top leaders see first-hand how people within the company are affected, they could be more likely to make a change toward more supportive workplace policies.
3. Women can learn the unspoken norms of leadership through mentoring
One of the biggest benefits of mentoring to mentees is having a channel to “learn the ropes” and have a forum to discuss norms of an organization. As an illustration, a study looking at mentoring among first-time board members describes a norm that newcomers are unlikely to understand without mentoring.
The study explains that most corporate boards will provide counsel and advice to the CEO, but only in extreme circumstances will the board challenge the CEO’s strategy. Directors may bring up issues in a board meeting, but typically these are cleared with the CEO in advance.
The fact that these issues have already been raised with the CEO beforehand is rarely discussed in board meetings or reflected in the minutes. As a result, a newcomer may not learn about this norm through observation.
It’s true that getting more women into leadership positions won’t happen with a single intervention. However, one would be hard pressed to find a program or policy that can make more of an impact than mentoring. For companies who want to increase the number of women in leadership positions, a mentoring program is a must-have.
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