Forget 'Dress For Success:' Four Truly Powerful Ways To Ignite Women's Careers - Forbes

Don’t flaunt your body. Don’t be shrill. Don’t dye your hair “bottle blonde.”

There’s an astonishing list of don’ts for women that appeared in a recent news story about a prominent professional services firm offering misguided advice for aspiring women leaders. Immediately, the story sparked jokes among my colleagues: "Is this shapeless burlap sack too short for work? Should I try to imitate James Earl Jones when I talk to be less shrill? Is blonde hair OK if it’s from a box, but not a bottle?"

While the jokes help alleviate the frustration and disbelief, the real question is how these types of things continue to occur.

A big part of the problem is where we choose to use data to support women in leadership efforts. The good news is that there’s plenty of research to support the business case for women in leadership on the front end. For example, hot-off-the-presses research (paywall) by the Wall Street Journal found that the 20 most-diverse companies in the S&P 500 returned significantly higher share value than their low-diversity peers.

But while companies are using data to support women in leadership at the strategy level, many are failing at the execution level. Once they get buy-in to do the program, they aren’t sure how to build a science-backed program that will actually help women. Thus, they rely on outmoded methods and assumptions in the belief that doing something is better than doing nothing. In the best cases, the program is simply ineffective. In the worst cases, it reinforces negative stereotypes.

To unleash the potential of women leaders, organizations need to invest in individual and structural change driven by data and science. Here are four ways to help ensure more women get into leadership positions:

1. Focus on real gaps, not stereotypes.

One of the most pervasive and damaging myths is of gender essentialism, which is a belief that women and men are biologically different in ways that impact workplace performance. But my company, DDI, has done thousands of leadership assessments over the years, and we have found no statistical differences between men and women in terms of leadership skills or personalities.

However, our data does indicate a confidence gap. Women consistently rate themselves lower than men as leaders, despite equal performance. This is often the result of much larger issues — unconscious bias they’ve faced, exclusive work cultures, and inadequate mentorship and support. By focusing your attention on the root causes, your diversity and inclusion efforts can yield the greatest return on investment.

2. Fix the culture, not the women.

Remember the boxy shoulder pads and baggy pants of the 1980s-era power suits? It was an attempt to make women seem more professional and trustworthy by giving them broader shoulders and fewer curves. It’s perhaps one of the most visual representations of the mistake of trying to “fix” women by making them seem more like men.

It’s still common for women to be told they should be more like men (paywall), so that they can, by extension, be more successful. They're told to be more assertive, ask for more money and take more risks. But none of those things works unless the culture changes with it. In a report my company published, data shows that companies that succeed in diversity have embedded inclusion in their culture.

Women-in-leadership training needs to target deep cultural shifts, which happen at both structural and individual behavior levels. Look for programs that target organizational behavior change through empowerment and allyship, offer individual recommendations, enforce organizational accountability and take a grass-roots approach to change, starting from the top down.

3. Leverage immersive technology for empathy.

Many diversity and inclusion training programs are famous for being unengaging online modules that people click through while they answer emails. A successful diversity and inclusion program depends on one thing: empathy. In my experience, executives may intellectually see the value in having more women in leadership roles, but not understand it on an emotional level.

Surprisingly, technology can be a powerful tool here. One option is virtual reality, which can help generate empathy for others, and is often nicknamed the “Empathy Machine.” Virtual reality can help people not only see, but feel the impact of exclusion as though it's happening to them. When we tried a VR-based approach with executives, it was the first time many of them reported experiencing the emotions of being excluded at work. By leveraging immersive technology, there’s an opportunity to reach people on a deeper and more emotional level.

4. Forget training that lacks intersectionality.

Women-in-leadership training is not effective as a one-size-fits-all approach. In their annual “Women in the Workplace” report, LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Company cite several data points that underscore the need for intersectionality in women-in-leadership training. Race, sexuality, class, nationality and disability each play a role in shaping women’s experiences in the workplace, thereby drastically affecting their outcomes. Look for programs that explicitly flex for the needs of individuals with different backgrounds.

There’s little time to lose with ineffective gender diversity training. The aforementioned report showed women start falling behind at the very first rung of leadership. We need to be leveraging the data and technology at our disposal to create stronger programs that will change the trajectory of women’s careers early on. Without those things, women may not get the opportunities they need to prepare for higher levels, such as leading high-risk projects or taking international assignments. Safe to say, I think we can worry a little less about skirt length and hair color, and focus more on the one thing that doesn’t lie: data.

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2019/11/21/forget-dress-for-success-four-truly-powerful-ways-to-ignite-womens-careers/

2019-11-21 12:00:00Z
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