HR professionals have long realized that
female senior executives have different needs from their
male counterparts. A new study makes the differences—and
the surprising similarities—clearer.
"Leaders in a Global Economy: A Study
of Executive Women and Men," a new study conducted
by the Families and Work Institute, Catalyst and the
Boston College Center for Work & Family, closely
examines high-level male and female executives and the
"factors that enhance, and inhibit, their success
on the job and at home."
The study was conducted in three phases.
The first phase comprised lengthy telephone interviews
with four to five very senior women in each participating
company. The second phase brought together delegations
of top women leaders from participating companies during
a three-day seminar in Prague, the Czech Republic. There
they discussed issues related to women in business,
presented benchmarking data on the companies and reviewed
best practices to help them create plans for making
change within their companies.
"Our participants at the Prague conference
wanted to replicate their experience with senior female
executives here at JP Morgan Chase," Joy Bunson,
senior vice president, human resources development,
told HR News. They were energized by the interaction
with senior women executives and by sharing strategies
for helping women manage their careers, she said.
In the third phase, an online survey of
approximately 1,200 executives located mostly in the
United States, Canada, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific
and Latin America was conducted between March and June
2002. From the responses, nine "common wisdoms"
were re-examined and mined for truth—and myth.
1. Common Wisdom: The
higher women climb, the more they have to give up in
their personal and family lives.
Finding: The study found that the female
executives who responded to the survey are more likely
than male respondents to have made important life decisions
to manage both their careers and their personal lives.
For example, 18 percent of the women compared to 9 percent
of the men have delayed marriage or a commitment to
a partner.
2. Common Wisdom: Executives
have to be work-centric to feel successful and to succeed
in their careers.
Finding: Sixty-one percent of all executives
who responded have placed a higher or much higher priority
on their work than on their personal or family life
over the past year. However, 32 percent of both the
men and women reported placing an equal priority on
work and on their personal or family lives.
3. Common wisdom: Men
are more ambitious than women.
Finding: Nineteen percent of the male
executives said they aspire to be a CEO or managing
partner compared to only 9 percent of the women, and
54 percent of senior-level males reported they hoped
to join their senior management committee compared to
only 43 percent of the women respondents.
4. Common Wisdom: Companies
need to use different strategies to help women and men
succeed.
Finding: Eighty-three percent of all
the respondents noted opportunities for leadership positions
as a strategy that has been helpful to their success,
and 80 percent (male and female) noted challenging assignments.
5. Common Wisdom: Men
and women use different personal strategies to succeed.
Finding: Executive women and men described
similar personal strategies that have helped them succeed.
These included both so-called “masculine”
strategies, such as taking risks and challenges and
standing up for what they think, as well as so-called
“feminine” strategies, such as being collaborative.
6. Common Wisdom: Men
and women face different organizational barriers to
advancement.
Finding: Women reported facing many more obstacles than
men, including being excluded from important networks,
having a limited number of role models, having limited
opportunities for experiences in line management or
general management, facing gender stereotypes and being
in dual-career families.
7. Common Wisdom: Higher-level
executives—male and female alike—can either
stand in the way or help those below them succeed.
Finding: When asked about the person
who has helped them the most, 87 percent of respondents
referred to a man. Among women executives, however,
19 percent have been helped the most by a woman.
8. Common Wisdom: Women
executives are more likely to leave their jobs than
men and for different reasons.
Finding: An equal percent of male and
female executives—44 percent—reported they
plan to leave their jobs in five years or less. Almost
30 percent plan to leave in five years or less but do
not plan to retire. Importantly, more women (32 percent)
than men (26 percent) are in this category. One reason
for this difference is that men executives are somewhat
older on average than women executives.
9. Common Wisdom: Retention
strategies—for both men and women—should
focus on the “hard issues” of promotion
and compensation, not the softer issues.
Finding: To retain talent in the executive
ranks, employers need to attend not only to matters
of promotion and compensation, but also to the so-called
“softer issues” like respect and acceptance
of individual differences, support in the workplace,
job quality and flexibility.
The following recommendations emerged
out of the study:
• Focus on leadership: Review the senior leadership
group in the company to assess the diversity of the
group, going beyond race or gender demographics to include
personal styles, family status, career paths and nationalities.
• Focus on key developmental experiences: Provide
opportunities for learning and development on the job,
as well as challenging and visible “stretch”
assignments, reasonable risk taking, and cross-functional
roles that broaden all employees’ exposure and
skills.
• Focus on rewards: Review performance management
systems so that rewards are aligned with business goals
and values, clearly communicated, and consistently used
as the basis for recruitment, compensation, promotions
and other opportunities.
• Focus on connections: Create a mentoring culture
by recognizing and rewarding those who are effective
mentors and coaches. Use workplace networks as an important
resource for meeting the needs of underrepresented groups.
• Focus on work/life: Transform the company understanding
about work-life, clarifying that it is possible and
preferable to have a viable personal life while holding
a senior management position in the company.
• Focus on retention: Examine the factors that
might cause executives to leave, such as the lack of
respect, job quality, supportiveness and flexibility,
and address them in ways that improve retention.
The Prague meeting resulted in women senior
executives developing a newfound "passion and conviction
about changing the way people's careers are developed,"
said Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work
Institute. She said she hopes that HR professionals
will use the study findings to involve more senior women
in the planning and execution of strategies to help
women succeed at their level.
Karyn-Siobhan Robinson is staff writer
for HR News.
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