Women's History Month, Women's Day, etc etc.. bring it on!!!

I got an email earlier this week saying its Women's History Month. It was one of those cute, light-hearted emails which say there are 3 billion women on this planet who dont look like super models and only 8 do... That the real beauty of a woman lies not in her figure but in her eyes.

As my mind wandered, a long leisurely, unhindered walk, from this email to other related thoughts, it finally landed on some of my interactions with women on business school campuses and to the typical questions that I get asked as a woman who has spent a few more years than them in the corporate world.

“Are there women in senior levels in your firm?” “Does your firm have flexi-hours?” “What is the maternity leave policy in your firm?”

These are typically questions women who are considering joining the corporate world ask. While these questions may not be asked in larger settings, they are definitely probed in smaller, women-only groups. It is heartening to see that women entering the corporate world or already in the corporate world are comfortable asking these questions and acknowledging that these issues are important in their career decisions. In a way, it indicates their comfort with acknowledgement of themselves as women in the male dominated corporate field.

However, allowing a woman to deal with motherhood and family commitments does not necessarily make an organization woman friendly. It is a necessary condition but not sufficient. What determines the women friendliness, in fact at a wider level, diversity friendliness of an organization is its culture.

Today there are many industries and corporate which have a high percentage of women, with reasonable if not equitable, distribution of women across various levels of hierarchy. IT sector, BPO, retail banking are some examples. However, there are still many industries and corporates where women only represent 10% or 20% of the overall population, with very few women at higher levels. There is no one to blame. This is not as much a function of these organizations not hiring enough women as it is a direct outcome of women representing only 20% or lesser population of most engineering and business schools.

Whatever be the cause, the low percentage of women implies that in most of these organizations male behaviors have become dominant behaviors and also expected behaviors. In roles and functions where the measures of success are not easily quantifiable (e.g. sales targets) but are more subjective and behavioral, the way successful men behave becomes the commonly understood benchmark of success. For example, the aggression with which a male colleague presents or argues his points in meetings becomes an indicator of his depth of knowledge or belief in his viewpoint and others who present more softly or listen actively to the groups’ views may become a sign of lack of knowledge. The number of times a male colleague takes his/her client out to dinner and backslaps him may become an indicator of his ability to build strong client relationships and the inability or lack of desire of a woman to do the same an indicator of her lack of ability to bond with clients. This is not intentional and in fact so subtle that it may not even be recognized. But that unfortunately is exactly why it is more dangerous and harder to address. What is not known and unintentional is even harder to fix.

However there are organizations which recognize that men and women are different and hence may behave differently in the same situations, often taking different paths to deal with the same issue but still ending up equally successful. For example, women may present more softly but through their consensual style, may be more effective in dealing with hostile situations. Women may not take clients out for one-on-one dinners in week 1 of the assignment but are willing to open themselves up more and hence potentially build stronger, more personal relationships with clients over a longer time horizon.

Organizations that recognize that women may have a different style but potentially equally effective or even more effective in certain situations, organizations that can actually differentiate between interim behaviours and end results and evaluate people on the latter and not the former are more successful in leveraging and retaining high potential women. Because in these organizations, women are not always trying to be men but are focusing more on their own styles and unique skill sets and hence adding an additional capability dimension to their organization.

This logic applies not only to men and women but diversity of all types. It applies to all situations where the challenge is in integrating people from difference backgrounds in an organization that is dominated by one particular type of people so far. For example integrating people of different nationalities and cultures into an organization; integrating people with diversity in educational backgrounds, integrating people with unconventional career paths. No matter what the nature of diversity, having an open and accepting culture in terms of behaviors and skill sets, being able to see the differences as positive and not negative is key in building diversity in an organsation.

This is certainly easier said than done. Accepting diversity in this manner implies that seniors and team leaders have to be able to differentiate between behaviours that they observe every day and end results that may only happen over time and recognize and appreciate that there may be different behavioural paths to same results. They have to be willing to work with people who have very different work styles and adapt their own leadership style, mentorship style, evaluation style to that rather than expect everyone else to modify themselves to the existing norm. Leveraging diversity implies spending more time observing each person in your team, understanding what they uniquely bring to your team and interacting with him/her in a way to get the best of him/her. It implies having systems in place at the firm level that preserve core values while accepting behavioral differences amongst people.

Seems like hard work, however, it is potentially all worth it when it translates into being able to effectively integrate and hence leverage a much larger talent pool in the organization.