Dear Harriet,
In response to your invitation to email you about whether or not it should be shared publicly when a company has a strong number of women at the top, I want to build on what you said in your message - that it is about having people who are right for the job at the top. It doesn't matter that your friend's company has not had some proactive recruiting strategy to get women to the top. In fact, even better that he has not. He has not had to, because he has been looking for the right people and has the structures and attitudes that allow that to include a fair share of women.
And I think that needs drawing attention to, even shouting about, as part of a wider change in understanding of what it means to lead and what good leadership is. What are the skills and behaviours of good leaders? What are the right skills for the job? Who has those skills and demonstrates those behaviours? And, most importantly, how do we create the right structures, supports and culture to have those people at the top - men or women. However, that said, the reality remains that many workplaces do need to make proactive changes - in structures or attitudes - to allow women, who have the skills and demonstrate the necessary behaviours and attitudes to be good at the top, to be in those in those positions, even if your friend's company did not.
So yes. Get out there. Talk about what makes those people best for the job and how your organisation makes it possible for women (and men) with those skills to be there when so many other organisations still don't, whether because they don't value the right skills or because they have structures that make it inherently difficult for women to be at the top. There's no tokenism involved in that and it doesn't put women on a pedestal so much as leadership skills.
There's a good HBR blog that discusses this issue further: Why do so many incompetent men reach the top?
Regards,
Helen
In response to your invitation to email you about whether or not it should be shared publicly when a company has a strong number of women at the top, I want to build on what you said in your message - that it is about having people who are right for the job at the top. It doesn't matter that your friend's company has not had some proactive recruiting strategy to get women to the top. In fact, even better that he has not. He has not had to, because he has been looking for the right people and has the structures and attitudes that allow that to include a fair share of women.
And I think that needs drawing attention to, even shouting about, as part of a wider change in understanding of what it means to lead and what good leadership is. What are the skills and behaviours of good leaders? What are the right skills for the job? Who has those skills and demonstrates those behaviours? And, most importantly, how do we create the right structures, supports and culture to have those people at the top - men or women. However, that said, the reality remains that many workplaces do need to make proactive changes - in structures or attitudes - to allow women, who have the skills and demonstrate the necessary behaviours and attitudes to be good at the top, to be in those in those positions, even if your friend's company did not.
So yes. Get out there. Talk about what makes those people best for the job and how your organisation makes it possible for women (and men) with those skills to be there when so many other organisations still don't, whether because they don't value the right skills or because they have structures that make it inherently difficult for women to be at the top. There's no tokenism involved in that and it doesn't put women on a pedestal so much as leadership skills.
There's a good HBR blog that discusses this issue further: Why do so many incompetent men reach the top?
Regards,
Helen