Korn Ferry, a single source of leadership and talent consulting services, is highlighting research that finds while women rate higher in overall competencies for senior leadership positions, they lack key career experiences that tend to give men an edge up on promotions at the most senior levels of organisations.
The Korn Ferry research found that with the exception of confidence, women generally score higher than men in all dimensions of leadership style such as comfort with ambiguity and being socially attuned. They also score higher in most of the skills and competencies deemed necessary for senior leadership success, such as employee engagement, customer satisfaction and building talent.
“What women are missing are the experiences that their male counterparts seek out during mid-level and business unit level roles,” said J. Evelyn Orr, senior director of the Korn Ferry Institute and editor of Korn Ferry’s research on women in leadership. “Women need to seek out and say ‘yes’ to experiences that stretch their skills and organisations need to provide women with opportunities to accept those challenges earlier in their careers.”
These critical experiences include challenging/difficult situations, business growth, financials, strategy, and high-risk, high-visibility assignments such as helping turn around a low-performing unit. The study shows women are either not being offered or are saying “no” to critical opportunities more often— leaving them a full leadership level behind in experiences when they are considered for senior positions.
As of June 2014, only 24 Fortune 500 companies had female CEOs and women occupied just 16.9 percent of Fortune 500 board seats.
This isn’t just about helping women break the glass ceiling. Having a critical mass of female leaders across the organisation and at the top is proven to have a direct correlation with better financial return. McKinsey’s 2012 Women Matter study measured a 41 percent higher return on equity and a 56 percent higher earnings before interest and taxes margin for companies that have the largest share of women on their executive committees.
A majority of top-ranked women at companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index aren't in the kinds of operational jobs - think division heads of senior managers in charge of key product lines - that usually lead to the corner office. Rather, 55% of them are in functional roles - top lawyers, finance chiefs, and heads of human resources -according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
About 94% of the S&P 500 CEOs held senior operations positions immediately before ascending to the top job, and the relative scarcity of women overseeing product lines or entire businesses has slowed their advance to the pinnacle. The data suggest that the next generation of female executives is not positioned to capitalise on the growing recognition by many companies of the lack of diversity within their executive ranks.
Women make up about half of the total U.S. workforce. The 24 female chief executives in the S&P 500 today, although a record, is still less than 5% of the total. In the layers just beneath the top job, women account for about 8% of the five highest paid executives at each S&P 500 company, according to proxy filings. About 70 of those top-ranked non-CEO women were in operating jobs, based on data compiled by Bloomberg.
To produce female CEOs, more corporations must make a conscious effort to spot future leaders early in their careers and push them toward operational jobs, according to management experts.
Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek, September 1, 2014
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Women in Management have Higher Competencies than Men
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