More Companies are Recruiting More Women for Management and Board Roles
A few facts to consider:
- Companies and some governments are increasingly interested in setting gender balance quotas
- Many companies want more diversity in the decision-making, or a more participative style of leadership
- Customers are increasingly female and expect to be able to deal with other women
- There is a shortage of qualified management talent to move into management roles for the future
- Women are an “untapped resource”
- Female university graduates outnumber males in most countries
∧Women Have Come a Long Way, but…
Join an On-line Networking Community of Women Leaders and Managers
No time for career networking? Join our on-line community of women managing in businesses like yours, across Europe, Russia and the Middle East, to discuss challenges you face and what to do about them. Discussion topics include:
- Balance a management career and motherhood
- Get into or go around the “old boys’ networks”
- Keep our femininity and female values while succeeding on male decision and performance criteria
- Improve our own assertiveness and confidence, without becoming aggressive
- And many of us still face discrimination, whether open or subtle and even unintended
MCE Leadership Network for Women in Senior Management
This group is for women in senior leadership roles responsible for implementation of strategy, who have few female role models and peers in their organization. We aim, by discussion, to find ways to meet challenges like balancing career & motherhood, overcoming stereotypes, asserting ourselves. Click here to join
MCE High Potential Network for Women Managers
This community is for young women managers working hard at career progression, to discuss the challenges of balancing career and family, getting recognized, networking, and advancing in your career. Click here to join
Women have made great progress in business. They make up more than half the workforce and are increasingly occupying management and senior leadership positions. The “playing field” has become more level in many industries and countries and women are able to compete directly as never before. Some companies are actively recruiting women for their boards. They are building programmes to move more women into the management ranks and leadership pipeline. But there is still progress to be made.
As companies begin to push more women into management and senior executive roles for “gender balance”, competent women fear a backlash, if too many of their counterparts are put into positions they are not qualified for. Many women also do not want to feel or have others perceive that they were only promoted into a position to fill a quota, or that they benefited unfairly from extra help.
Women still face career challenges or obstruction in many company or national cultures, there is still much progress to be made.
Women on European Boards of Directors, 2010
Balancing it All at the Same Time
Many women feel torn between career ambition and a sense of duty to their employers, and wanting to raise happy healthy families. Many women in business continue to operate in male-dominated environments, with male definitions of success and performance criteria. Women want to succeed as women, not by becoming like men.
Goals and Aspirations
Women want to get their point across, and to receive equal weight and fair consideration for their input, without having to become aggressive or turn into dragons. They would like to be better at selling themselves and their ideas, and being involved in the right conversations. They would like to be better networkers, but feel guilty about taking time away from either work or home in order to attend networking events.
The Main Concern: Getting Things Done
Most women we have talked to are not interested in endless discussions about the “glass ceiling” or fairness. They just want to do a good job, get strategy implemented, and not have their gender get in the way of that.
∧Talk to MCE about Women in Management and Leadership
MCE Senior Associates have over 20 years of senior management experience, and we have a dedicated team of female associates who have led senior management careers, overcoming challenges along the way. They can help you with business issues as well as career challenges women face, not just from theory but from what works in real life, in different contexts.
MCE enables individual managers and management teams to deliver on strategic goals. 60% of strategic success is about implementation and people alignment. Therefore, people are at the core of everything we do to help you get your strategy implemented. We enable you to deliver your strategy through people, by providing them with the functional and cross-functional capabilities they need to measurably improve performance, in function of your strategy.
∧How MCE Can Help
For Individual Managers
Executive Mentoring & Coaching
Individual managers may benefit by one-on-one mentoring and coaching. MCE senior women associates can offer more than a standard coach. They have been leaders themselves for many years and can act also as a mentor and advisor.
Workshops for Individual Managers
MCE offers workshops for individual women managers to plan their strategy implementation through people, and improve their leadership skills.
In these workshops, you can interact with a small but diverse group of women managers from different industries, functions and geographic regions, who are all struggling with similar issues. In this richly diverse environment, women can work on finding solutions. They will benefit from the guidance of a female MCE Senior Associate.
For Teams, Divisions, Organizations
Consulting
An MCE senior associate can advise your management team or steering committee on strategies and programmes for attracting and developing more women managers in your leadership pipeline.
Strategy Implementation Programmes
MCE custom-designs with you and delivers programmes to develop your female managers and leaders, in terms of business skills, strategy, leadership, but also to develop their own identities as women leaders. We then help them plan how they will lead and implement strategy through their people.
Corporate Learning & Development
Experienced MCE associates can design and manage your development curriculum for your high potential female talent on an outsourced basis.
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