RESEARCH & IDEAS
Leadership Program for Women
Targets Subtle Promotion Biases
Published: February 21, 2012
Author: Maggie Starvish
Despite more women in the corporate work
force, they still are underrepresented in
executive officer positions. Harvard Business
School Professor Robin Ely and colleagues
propose a new way to think about developing
women for leadership. Key concepts include:
• Despite more women in the corporate work
force, they fill less than 15 percent of
executive officer positions at Fortune 500
companies and make up just 3.6 percent of
CEOs.
• "Second generation" forms of subtle gender
bias favor men for top leadership positions
and create structural career blocks for
women.
• A new approach to women's leadership
development helps participants internalize a
leader identity and create an elevated sense
of purpose.
• Organizations must also take responsibility
for giving equal opportunities to their
employees.
For the last quarter century, many fought
hard to overcome gender discrimination in the
workplace by raising awareness, strengthening
antidiscrimination policies, and encouraging
more women to enter the corporate world.
At first blush, that work appeared to pay off.
After all, as of 2010, women made up 46.7
percent of the US labor force, and filled more
than half of management, professional, and
related occupations. If the strategy was to get
more women in the workplace and let them
naturally ascend to positions of upper
management, it seemed the pump was well
primed.
But even with increasing representation,
women still fill less than 15 percent of
executive officer positions at Fortune 500
companies and make up just 3.6 percent of
CEOs.
The glass ceiling, it seems, moved higher up
the organization, but was far from broken.
"Women's progress has really leveled off,
and has been stuck for at least 10 years," says
Robin J. Ely, the Warren Alpert Professor of
Business Administration at Harvard Business
School and senior associate dean for Culture
and Community.
"Women's progress has
really leveled off, and has
been stuck for at least 10
years."
—Robin Ely
What went wrong? In their article Taking
Gender into Account: Theory and Design for
Women's Leadership Development Programs,
which appeared in the September 2011 issue of
the Academy of Management Learning &
Education, Ely and coauthors Herminia Ibarra
(INSEAD) and Deborah Kolb (Simmons School
of Management) describe how previously
identified "second-generation" forms of subtle
gender bias have impeded women's progress.
These practices and patterns, although
unintentional, favor men and create structural
career blocks for women.
The paper is believed to be the first to
incorporate an understanding of
second-generation bias into a new approach to
women's leadership development, moving
beyond traditional programs developed for men.
"Most leadership development for women is
'add women and stir'—basically, delivering to
women what is delivered to men—or 'fix the
women,' a strategy of training-up to be 'as good
as' men," says Ely. "They don't take the
systemic gender biases in organizations into
account when educating women about how to
move into and exercise leadership."
How people become leaders
The paper frames leadership development as
"identity work" requiring the person to
undertake two tasks: internalizing a leader
identity (coming to see oneself and being seen
by others as a leader) and developing an
elevated sense of purpose.
Identity work is a process shaped by loops
of action and feedback. For example, a person
asserts leadership in an area, feedback affirms
or disaffirms those actions, which builds or
reduces confidence, in turn encouraging or
discouraging further actions. "Through this
back-and-forth, the would-be leader
accumulates experiences that inform his or her
sense of self as a leader, as well as feedback
about his or her fit for taking up the leader
role," according to the paper.
Furthermore, a leader's identity is tied to her
or his sense of purpose. Leaders are most
effective—both with themselves and with those
they lead—when their personal values align
with the work they are doing and connect to
something that is larger than themselves.
But women doing the sort of identity work
it takes to reach top-level positions in
companies are often stopped in their tracks by
subtle forms of gender bias, which are deeply
ingrained in workplace culture and society at
large. These biases can interfere with the dual
requirements of internalizing a leader identity
and developing an elevated sense of purpose.
First-generation biases, such as policies or
actions that deliberately discriminate against
women in hiring and promotion, have been
largely wiped off the books. Second-generation
biases, while unintentional, can have the same
effect, blocking women from upper
management.
Second-generation bias
For example, women are ascribed to be
friendly, emotional, and unselfish, attributes
that seem inconsistent with larger societal
beliefs about what a leader must be, such as
assertive, self-confident, and entrepreneurial
(which are traditionally seen as masculine
traits.) Furthermore, women who do display
those behaviors can be seen as abrasive instead
of assertive, arrogant instead of self-confident,
and self-promoting instead of entrepreneurial.
These perceptions can hold women back.
"We cannot just tell women that if they
want to take their place at the top of their
organizations, they need to follow the patterns
of their male colleagues," says coauthor Kolb.
And without women in high places, younger
women lack the role models and mentors to
help them succeed. It seems the organization is
signaling that being female is a liability,
discouraging talented women from working
toward top positions.
Second-generation gender bias also
manifests itself in organizational practices that
COPYRIGHT 2012 PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 1fail to take women's lives into account, hinder
their ability to develop powerful networks, and
create excessive performance pressure on
women.
A fresh approach
The solution offered by traditional
leadership development programs for women
has been to teach them the established rules so
they could be effective players in a masculine
culture.
By contrast, Ely, Ibarra, and Kolb propose a
new set of principles to drive women's
leadership programs (WLPs):
1. Situate topics and tools in an analysis of
second-generation gender bias. Participants
receive a nuanced understanding of
second-generation bias and how it may
impact their own career development and the
career development of other women in their
firms.
2. Create a holding environment to support
women's identity work. The programs create
a safe environment and peer networks that
support participants in understanding and
shaping who they are and who they can
become.
3. Anchor participants on their leadership
purpose. WLPs redirect the participants
away from a single-minded focus on career
advancement and managing other people's
perceptions of them as leaders, and toward
identifying larger leadership purposes and
the actions they need to undertake to
accomplish them.
These programs help participants build
skills around networking, negotiation, leading
change, and managing career transitions. "We
raise women's consciousness about how subtle
forms of gender bias can get in their way and in
other women's way, while giving them tools for
addressing these problems and thus imparting in
them a sense of agency," Ely says.
Negotiation and networking
One important technique women must
master to create change in their organizations is
negotiation, but research shows that women
who negotiate hard for themselves experience
backlash, says Ely. "They're evaluated
negatively. Oftentimes, it's not that they don't
know how to negotiate or don't want to
negotiate. It's that they're trying to avoid the
negative evaluation that comes along with being
a hard negotiator as a woman."
The authors recommend that WLPs use a
"shadow negotiation" framework that focuses
on strategic "moves and turns" to give women
tools to negotiate over potentially controversial
issues and decisions.
"We cannot just tell women
that if they want to take
their place at the top of
their organizations, they
need to follow the patterns
of their male colleagues"
—Deborah Kolb
In this process, the negotiator must come to
see her own value and find ways to make it
visible, gain from the experience of others in
similar circumstances, explore various
alternatives to agreement, learn to quickly
regain one's footing when challenged, and
develop an appreciation for why her request
might be resisted.
These negotiations entail skill not only at
assessing which options might lead to mutually
acceptable agreements but also at enlisting
support—women's negotiations often require
raising awareness of and pushing back on
gendered structures and work practices.
Another way women can gain access to
leadership opportunities is through more
effective networking. And since there are
myriad differences between the way men and
women network, and the networks themselves,
WLPs must do more than teach traditional
networking skills. They should, for example,
address the issue of authenticity: women tend to
see the sort of networking men do as
inauthentic; they feel as if they're using people.
Vital networks can begin to form as soon as
WLP participants walk in the door. "You bring
senior women together from around the
company, and it's the first time they've been in a
room with that many women at their level,
because they're in all different divisions,
different parts of the world…It's powerful…it's
something they've really been missing," says
Ely. "And a lot of them don't even realize
they've been missing it because they've never
had it."
In the authors' experience, the networks
formed within WLPs carry on well beyond the
programs themselves and expand to create
mentor relationships that help other women
move up the corpora
RESEARCH & IDEAS
Leadership Program for Women
Targets Subtle Promotion Biases
Published: February 21, 2012
Author: Maggie Starvish
Despite more women in the corporate work
force, they still are underrepresented in
executive officer positions. Harvard Business
School Professor Robin Ely and colleagues
propose a new way to think about developing
women for leadership. Key concepts include:
• Despite more women in the corporate work
force, they fill less than 15 percent of
executive officer positions at Fortune 500
companies and make up just 3.6 percent of
CEOs.
• "Second generation" forms of subtle gender
bias favor men for top leadership positions
and create structural career blocks for
women.
• A new approach to women's leadership
development helps participants internalize a
leader identity and create an elevated sense
of purpose.
• Organizations must also take responsibility
for giving equal opportunities to their
employees.
For the last quarter century, many fought
hard to overcome gender discrimination in the
workplace by raising awareness, strengthening
antidiscrimination policies, and encouraging
more women to enter the corporate world.
At first blush, that work appeared to pay off.
After all, as of 2010, women made up 46.7
percent of the US labor force, and filled more
than half of management, professional, and
related occupations. If the strategy was to get
more women in the workplace and let them
naturally ascend to positions of upper
management, it seemed the pump was well
primed.
But even with increasing representation,
women still fill less than 15 percent of
executive officer positions at Fortune 500
companies and make up just 3.6 percent of
CEOs.
The glass ceiling, it seems, moved higher up
the organization, but was far from broken.
"Women's progress has really leveled off,
and has been stuck for at least 10 years," says
Robin J. Ely, the Warren Alpert Professor of
Business Administration at Harvard Business
School and senior associate dean for Culture
and Community.
"Women's progress has
really leveled off, and has
been stuck for at least 10
years."
—Robin Ely
What went wrong? In their article Taking
Gender into Account: Theory and Design for
Women's Leadership Development Programs,
which appeared in the September 2011 issue of
the Academy of Management Learning &
Education, Ely and coauthors Herminia Ibarra
(INSEAD) and Deborah Kolb (Simmons School
of Management) describe how previously
identified "second-generation" forms of subtle
gender bias have impeded women's progress.
These practices and patterns, although
unintentional, favor men and create structural
career blocks for women.
The paper is believed to be the first to
incorporate an understanding of
second-generation bias into a new approach to
women's leadership development, moving
beyond traditional programs developed for men.
"Most leadership development for women is
'add women and stir'—basically, delivering to
women what is delivered to men—or 'fix the
women,' a strategy of training-up to be 'as good
as' men," says Ely. "They don't take the
systemic gender biases in organizations into
account when educating women about how to
move into and exercise leadership."
How people become leaders
The paper frames leadership development as
"identity work" requiring the person to
undertake two tasks: internalizing a leader
identity (coming to see oneself and being seen
by others as a leader) and developing an
elevated sense of purpose.
Identity work is a process shaped by loops
of action and feedback. For example, a person
asserts leadership in an area, feedback affirms
or disaffirms those actions, which builds or
reduces confidence, in turn encouraging or
discouraging further actions. "Through this
back-and-forth, the would-be leader
accumulates experiences that inform his or her
sense of self as a leader, as well as feedback
about his or her fit for taking up the leader
role," according to the paper.
Furthermore, a leader's identity is tied to her
or his sense of purpose. Leaders are most
effective—both with themselves and with those
they lead—when their personal values align
with the work they are doing and connect to
something that is larger than themselves.
But women doing the sort of identity work
it takes to reach top-level positions in
companies are often stopped in their tracks by
subtle forms of gender bias, which are deeply
ingrained in workplace culture and society at
large. These biases can interfere with the dual
requirements of internalizing a leader identity
and developing an elevated sense of purpose.
First-generation biases, such as policies or
actions that deliberately discriminate against
women in hiring and promotion, have been
largely wiped off the books. Second-generation
biases, while unintentional, can have the same
effect, blocking women from upper
management.
Second-generation bias
For example, women are ascribed to be
friendly, emotional, and unselfish, attributes
that seem inconsistent with larger societal
beliefs about what a leader must be, such as
assertive, self-confident, and entrepreneurial
(which are traditionally seen as masculine
traits.) Furthermore, women who do display
those behaviors can be seen as abrasive instead
of assertive, arrogant instead of self-confident,
and self-promoting instead of entrepreneurial.
These perceptions can hold women back.
"We cannot just tell women that if they
want to take their place at the top of their
organizations, they need to follow the patterns
of their male colleagues," says coauthor Kolb.
And without women in high places, younger
women lack the role models and mentors to
help them succeed. It seems the organization is
signaling that being female is a liability,
discouraging talented women from working
toward top positions.
Second-generation gender bias also
manifests itself in organizational practices that
COPYRIGHT 2012 PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 1fail to take women's lives into account, hinder
their ability to develop powerful networks, and
create excessive performance pressure on
women.
A fresh approach
The solution offered by traditional
leadership development programs for women
has been to teach them the established rules so
they could be effective players in a masculine
culture.
By contrast, Ely, Ibarra, and Kolb propose a
new set of principles to drive women's
leadership programs (WLPs):
1. Situate topics and tools in an analysis of
second-generation gender bias. Participants
receive a nuanced understanding of
second-generation bias and how it may
impact their own career development and the
career development of other women in their
firms.
2. Create a holding environment to support
women's identity work. The programs create
a safe environment and peer networks that
support participants in understanding and
shaping who they are and who they can
become.
3. Anchor participants on their leadership
purpose. WLPs redirect the participants
away from a single-minded focus on career
advancement and managing other people's
perceptions of them as leaders, and toward
identifying larger leadership purposes and
the actions they need to undertake to
accomplish them.
These programs help participants build
skills around networking, negotiation, leading
change, and managing career transitions. "We
raise women's consciousness about how subtle
forms of gender bias can get in their way and in
other women's way, while giving them tools for
addressing these problems and thus imparting in
them a sense of agency," Ely says.
Negotiation and networking
One important technique women must
master to create change in their organizations is
negotiation, but research shows that women
who negotiate hard for themselves experience
backlash, says Ely. "They're evaluated
negatively. Oftentimes, it's not that they don't
know how to negotiate or don't want to
negotiate. It's that they're trying to avoid the
negative evaluation that comes along with being
a hard negotiator as a woman."
The authors recommend that WLPs use a
"shadow negotiation" framework that focuses
on strategic "moves and turns" to give women
tools to negotiate over potentially controversial
issues and decisions.
"We cannot just tell women
that if they want to take
their place at the top of
their organizations, they
need to follow the patterns
of their male colleagues"
—Deborah Kolb
In this process, the negotiator must come to
see her own value and find ways to make it
visible, gain from the experience of others in
similar circumstances, explore various
alternatives to agreement, learn to quickly
regain one's footing when challenged, and
develop an appreciation for why her request
might be resisted.
These negotiations entail skill not only at
assessing which options might lead to mutually
acceptable agreements but also at enlisting
support—women's negotiations often require
raising awareness of and pushing back on
gendered structures and work practices.
Another way women can gain access to
leadership opportunities is through more
effective networking. And since there are
myriad differences between the way men and
women network, and the networks themselves,
WLPs must do more than teach traditional
networking skills. They should, for example,
address the issue of authenticity: women tend to
see the sort of networking men do as
inauthentic; they feel as if they're using people.
Vital networks can begin to form as soon as
WLP participants walk in the door. "You bring
senior women together from around the
company, and it's the first time they've been in a
room with that many women at their level,
because they're in all different divisions,
different parts of the world…It's powerful…it's
something they've really been missing," says
Ely. "And a lot of them don't even realize
they've been missing it because they've never
had it."
In the authors' experience, the networks
formed within WLPs carry on well beyond the
programs themselves and expand to create
mentor relationships that help other women
move up the corpora
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