How to Effectively Develop Women Leaders

I recently got into a discussion on Twitter on how to encourage more women to start companies.  I attended a VC talk a while back in which the speaker mentioned that he hired women into his firm in order to encourage female entrepreneurs to come to him for funding.  He said this strategy worked.

For a long time I was firmly against events and policies that separated women from men, that claimed that women's talent required any kind of distinct category or unique nurturing.  Separate but equal, as far as I was concerned, was inherently unequal.

I no longer believe that.

Here's why I've changed my mind: there are a whole host of well-meaning people out there (many of them men) who would love to see more women in positions of social and economic power.  They come up with all kinds of theories as to why this doesn't happen, but if we want to actually address this issue, we need to recognize that the way we address women's participation in so-called "high-powered" career tracks is already inherently unequal.

I give the famous example of the econ prof I had in college.  Facing a 200-person class, 70% male, he tried to encourage women to speak up in a class discussion by bellowing "Step up, ladies!  We need more estrogen up here!"  His intentions were probably good, but if he were looking for an effective tactic to discourage the few women who'd already soldiered into his lecture, he probably succeeded.  Here's a little-known fact: the #1 way to discourage women (or any minority person) from speaking up is to remind them that nobody from their group ever speaks up.

Social norms are restrictive and disturbingly powerful.  When I told a male friend, once, that I might be interested in starting a company, his cheerful answer was, "There are no female entrepreneurs."  This statement, in addition to being blindingly ignorant, guaranteed that I would never discuss my professional hopes with him ever again. Now multiply this guy by millions and spread that effect over decades, and we get to my supporting point:

Women already know that we are not heads of companies, organizations or states.  We do not need to be told that.

But also.

We see that increasingly, women are heads of companies, organizations and states.  Next year's US Senate will see a record number of women Senators.  Women have started prestigious companies and been hired to head them.  So those who point to this "fact" look sexist at best and idiotic at worst.  Full stop.

So how to increase the number of these success stories?  Let's look at a couple of them.

First, my VC friend, mentioned above, claims that the reason they fund more women entrepreneurs is because he hires more women to work for him.  The same principle extends to the Senators. Several of the popular, promising young women who enter the US Senate next year were recruited by a single woman: Senator Patty Murray.  One of the cornerstones of Murray's strategy for expanding the Democrats' control of the Senate was to encourage more women to run for office. And it paid off.

From all of the above: women may respond well when men recognize their talent, but they respond really well when approached by women.  There are a lot of reasons why this might be, including women's greater comfort in discussing professional culture with other women.  It's not about competition or mentoring, it's merely the confidence that comes of knowing that other people have gone before you.  Men take precedent for granted, women often take the lack of precedent for granted.

Which is not to say that men can't advance women's careers or serve as their mentors and advisors.  Many of the gains in women's employment and success are the direct result of men who have done exactly that.  I'm not an expert on organizational theory, but I will say that to the extent men may not be getting the results they hope for (my prof above) they might be using the wrong tactics. Some anecdotal examples:

Bad tactics that men use when talking to women (all drawn from my experience and provided as cautionary tales!):

1.  Pointing out that there are no women in the front ranks.  When a man tells me this, I usually assume (fairly or otherwise) that he'd rather complain about the problem than find the solution.

2.  Talking incessantly. Many of the men I know - even (especially?) really intelligent ones - think a good conversation is one in which they do 90% of the talking.  I would rather work for (and befriend) someone who asks thoughtful questions than someone who thinks he has all the answers.  Is this a woman thing?  No idea.  Am I fond of lecturing people?  Yes.  Therefore, I say this as someone who knows she is not perfect either in this regard. Maybe we should all do a little less talking.

3. Responding irrationally to critique. I have heard this line before: "Well, you might not get that.  Most women don't, in my experience."  Ridiculous.  This would never happen with an ethnic minority ("Well, you don't get it because you're black") so why is that an acceptable rebuttal to a claim made by a woman?  Nobody likes being wrong, nobody likes a jackass who can't admit when he's wrong, and no talented woman will want to work for that jackass either.  This is especially problematic when issues of sexism crop up: I remember a newsroom debate in which the entire female staff of a publication felt that a particular photo was sexist, and the photo editor's response was, "It's totally harmless, you girls just don't get it."  Face it: if half the editors don't get it, there's a problem with the photo, not with the colleagues.  Again, I cite the example of the ethnic minority: this same response would never be used on, say, a Native American who felt a photo was degrading or offensive.  End of story.

4.  Making generalizations about women.  This relates to point #3, but seriously, comments like "Women tend to get more maternal about x" or "Women are bitchy to each other" or whatever else...are not the sort of thing I want to hear from management.
5.  Coming up with stupid and unscientific reasons for why things are the way they are.  Here we go: Women do not like/crave high-intensity jobs because a) nature created them to be more nurturing b) they are just not as gifted, particularly in the maths and sciences c) they do not want to work as long/as hard as men d) men are just better at/more interested in/more innately suited for task a, b, c...z.  If you honestly do not understand why these arguments are irrelevant and why they stink, you are likely an uneducated person who knows nothing about how scientists frame and test hypotheses, or you are God, and actually know that women were created differently from men, it has nothing to do with environmental factors of any sort, and it's what You Planned.  Most of us probably fall somewhere in between these two extremes, so let's look at the society we want and talk about how to get there, rather than look at the society we have and try to justify the things about it we don't like.

Okay, so, why is it important to create more women leaders?  People have been trying to answer this question effectively for decades.

Earlier this year, I read one attempt, a report by McKinsey called "Women Matter: An Asian Perspective." It's a great document, available for free as a PDF, and they talk extensively about differences between men and women in leadership style.  However well-meant, this document gets into the realm of #4, above.  I do know that a friend of mine who runs a company (oh hallo, female leader!) once told me that she gets better results from teams that include at least one woman.   BUT.  The argument that we should increase workplace diversity because women have different leadership skills from men also assumes that these leadership differences are inherent in gender and will not change as society changes.  A questionable assumption, in the long run.

Women have proven to be capable, inspiring and effective leaders - no one who has followed the remarkable achievements of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State would ever deny that. It's easy to say that Hillary is an exceptional woman, that such women will always defy the stereotypes.  But there are exceptional women out there who do not defy the stereotypes, who live and die in obscurity.  Almost all successful people - both men and women - can point to the mentors, advisors and employers who enabled their rise.  Who knows what might happen if we helped more women to that point?

So perhaps I will conclude as follows, by offering a philosophical reason why we should look to develop more women leaders and to remove social barriers to their success: because it is fair, and fairness is a virtue, and therefore doing something to make the world more fair (all other factors remaining equal) creates a better society.

And for those who are not swayed by that, consider this emotional appeal: I am sure somewhere in your life (or future life) there exists a young woman whom you believe deserves every opportunity. The world as it stands will not give that to her, certainly not as easily or as openly as it would offer it to her brother.  And the same world will watch her for mistakes more keenly than it will watch her brother, and it will be ready to blame her every misstep on her gender rather than her experience or knowledge or anything else within her control, and finally, if she is brutal enough on herself and that much better than everyone else, perhaps grudgingly it will give her half of what she deserves and expect her to be twice as grateful.

Is that what you want for her?