Transcript Document

Women in Surgery Conference
1 December 2008
Women and Leadership
Professor Susan Vinnicombe, OBE
• Myths
• Women directors in the UK
• Does it matter?
• Womens’ leadership styles
Page 2
Myths around women and top leadership
Myth 1
Women aren’t interested
In a study of more than 900 senior level
Women and men from Fortune 1000 companies,
Catalyst found that women and men have
equal desires to have the CEO job
(Catalyst, 2004)
Page 3
Myths around women and top leadership
Myth 2
Women aren’t seen as Leaders
 61% senior women quote style differences as a barrier
to advancement (compared to 26% CEOs)
 94% senior women see developing a style with which
male managers are comfortable as a key career strategy
for advancement.
(Opportunity Now 2000)
Page 4
Myths around women and top leadership
Myth 3
Women haven’t got the right experience
 Male CEOs say there aren’t more women on boards
because they lack general management experience and
they haven’t been in the pipeline long enough
 Female directors say there aren’t more women on boards
because of male stereotyping
(Catalyst 1999)
Page 5
Work experience of new FTSE 100 directors
2001 - 2004
Male
(n = 72)
Female
(n = 72)
Financial
Institutions
31.9%
44.4%
Management
Consultancy
13.9%
27.8%
Accountant
20.8%
19.4%
Law
6.9%
15.3%
Political
4.2%
11.1%
Academia
5.6%
12.5%
Public Sector
18.1%
31.9%
Voluntary/Charity
Sector
13.9%
22.2%
Other/Government
13.9%
23.6%
Page 6
Previous directorship experience
Male
(n = 72)
Female
(n = 72)
FTSE100
41.7%
22.2%
FTSE101-350
12.5%
16.7%
Minor Board
38.9%
62.5%
Page 7
Myths around women and top leadership
Myth 4
Women don’t take risks
Data
Women are more likely than men to be appointed
onto corporate boards when the companies share
prices have fallen
(Ryan and Haslam, 2005)
Page 8
Myths around women and top leadership
Myth 5
Highly educated women are opting out of the workforce
to become full time parents
Data
Women managers intentions to leave were based on a
perceived lack of career opportunities within their work
organisations, not on family reasons.
(Stroh et al, 1996)
Page 9
2008
5 Female CEO
FTSE 100
4.8% of Exec Directors
of FTSE 100 are female
14.9% of NEDs of FTSE 100
are female
13% Exec Committee Directors are female
18% of senior managers are female
30% of managers are female
30% – 60% graduate entry is female
Page 10
Factors explaining lack of women directors
• Lack of a transparent, open selection process (80% NEDs
through personal invitation of Chairman)
• No advertising of posts
• Some recent females appointed - struggling
• Key routes to the board-general management, operations,
finance. (Women in HR and legal consistently overlooked)
• Poor briefs by Chairmen
• Search consultants seen to have their favourites
Page 11
Why does it matter that so few women make
it to the top
• By 2010 just 20% of the workforce of the UK will be white male
and under 45. 80% of workforce growth will be among women.
Women will form a significant part of the available talent pool.
If we select our leaders from only half the population – waste of
talent
• 71% of the ‘main shoppers’ are women
• Women own 48% Britain’s personal wealth and this will rise to
60% in 2025
• Companies with women on the board perform better financially
(ROE) and have better corporate governance
• Better corporate decision making. The biggest difference shown
by Canadian Research is the significantly increased use of nonfinancial performance measures by boards with more women
(e.g. innovation, CSR, employee satisfaction, customer
satisfaction, communication, strategy implementation)
Page 12
Women with Attitude
A LEADER’S DOZEN:
12 THINGS WOMEN WITH ATTITUDE
DO AS LEADERS
(A leader is what a leader does)
Professor Susan Vinnicombe OBE
1: A leader resolves ethical dilemmas
In the 1990s a British Airways sales team analysed rival airlines
confidential booking information hacked off the reservation
system, run by BA, that other airlines like Virgin fed into.
BA used the data to try and poach customers away from rivals.
As a middle manager in BA marketing, Barbara Cassani was
enmeshed in the scam in a minor way.
Her judgement: “The statistics were being gained completely
illegally, yes, completely, but I had no idea at the time they were
being collected. If I had known that they were being collected
illegally I would have immediately stopped the activity. You do the
best you can and when you find out that something is being done
improperly you just stop it.”
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1: A leader resolves ethical dilemmas
Another transport boss, Ann Gloag of Stagecoach Buses and
Trains, maintains that no bribes are ever given and that
transparency is maintained.
She said: “When you go to see presidents and ministers in
developing countries they are always looking for bribes.
They looked at us and said that we were very mean. We
said that we will not give bribes; it is a company
policy…absolutely no bribes, but we will do projects that will
benefit the whole country. In Kenya, for example, we set up
an orphanage.”
In Malawi, she built a Burns Unit at Queen Elizabeth General
Hospital.
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2: A leader is open with her people
Dianne Thompson said:
“If there is one huge difference between men and women in
leading …and there are many…it is that women tend to be more
open!
Throughout my career I know that women talk more openly about
what they can do and what they can’t do and the problems they
have.”
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3: A leader brings out the best in people
“I would distinguish leadership from management. I was
taught at IBM that management is learning how to look
after resources.
Leadership is different. It involves inspiring people and
causing them to do more than they think they can do. That
to me is the greatest challenge and the greatest thrill of
leading – making people far more successful than they think
they can be.”
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4: A leader collaborates easily
Anne Wood, as a film producer, believes in a collaborative
leadership style. Her leadership role is to search for new
talent.
“I am on the lookout all the time. I try people out. We do
something that is very particular and we are looking for
skills that people sometimes do not know they have.”
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5: A leader shares the credit
Sharing credit for Dame Marjorie Scardino’s achievements
comes naturally for her and is part of her leadership style.
In her biggest acquisition she bought the publishers – Simon
& Schuster for £4.6 billion in November 1998. She made the
purchase with the help of Peter Jovanovich and immediately
put him in charge of Pearson Education to include the new
publisher and Pearson’s own publishing arm – AddisonWesley and Longman. When she is in the full glare of the
media announcing company results, she puts her arms
around the other members of her top team to make it
difficult for the photographers and camera men to exclude
them from the frame, by focussing only on her.
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6: A leader shares the cash
Dame Marjorie Scardino is still the only woman CEO of a
FTSE 100 company. She earned £1.29 million in salary last
year, which gave her a ranking of number 25 among
Britain’s top FTSE 100 CEOs – 99 men. She has extended
share option schemes from 20 per cent when she became
CEO five years ago to 96 per cent in 2001.
Patricia Vaz at BT says: “I watch every year when salary
reviews take place to make sure that we are not allowing
people to be disadvantaged because of where they come
from and who they are…I strip out the females and the
people of ethnic minorities to see if their performance
rankings are in any way out of line with the males or the
majority of the workforce.”
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7: A leader is concerned about her people
Dame Marjorie Scardino earned world-wide approval for an e-mail
to each of Pearson’s 28,000 employees following the terrorist
attacks of 9/11 on the World Trade Center where 65 Pearson
employees worked on the 17 floor of the north tower.
The e-mail said:
Dear Everybody
I want to make sure you know that our priority is that you are
safe and sound in body and mind. Be guided by what you and
your families need right now. There is no meeting you have to go
to and no plane you have to get on if you don’t feel comfortable
doing it. For now look to yourselves and to your families, and to
Pearson to help you any way we can.
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8: A leader is tenacious
Patricia Vaz said: “To achieve a leadership position in any organisation
you need tenacity – you must keep going and keep trying and you have to
be brave.”
“I met a scuba diver instructor in the West Indies who said that he would
rather teach a woman than a man in scuba diving, because a man will
swim up to death’s door (as a macho thing), saying “I can do this!”;
whereas a woman will say: “can we avoid the danger?”
Ann Burdus said: “…if women take on non-executive directorships they
will do it properly, which means that they will spend most of Sunday
reading the papers for next week’s board meeting.”
Ann Gloag: “There was a lot of criticism of stagecoach and our
aggressive behaviour. It was not aggressive at all. It was just that we
were the first to do it and there is a price to pay for being first.”
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9: A leader is consultative
Running the Royal Marsden Hospital was a huge job for Phylllis
Cunningham, but for 24 years at the top she kept an open policy.
She made it clear to others that she would listen to anyone from
trade union representatives to politicians.
She said: “I like to talk to people and get their views. But I’m
very careful not to usurp the authority of my directors or
managers. Part of my management style was to be always
approachable.”
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10: A leader is conciliatory
Prue Leath was as multi-tasked as a top manager could be.
She ran a catering business, a cookery school, and her own
restaurant at the same time. TV drama would depict all
three businesses to be high-pressured.
She says: “My management style was always conciliatory,
non-confrontational. I wanted to encourage people to do
their best and enjoy what they were doing. It’s the teacher
in me.”
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11. A leader looks for opportunities and
takes risks
The Scottish Business Insider magazine said of Ann Gloag,
transport entrepreneur: “It’s clear from voters (more than
250 senior executives who voted her the top award) that
Ann Gloag triumphed because her peers highly appreciate
her quite single-minded exhibition of business flair, strategic
clarity and downright opportunism…”
Ann Gloag’s father gave his entire bus driver’s pension to
help her and her brother start Stagecoach. She recalled:
“He invested every penny of it with our company – i think it
was £12,000. We tried to give it back but he would not take
it. Now of course he has had a great deal of pleasure for his
investment. But at the time, think of the faith that he had in
us to give us £12,000 – all he had.”
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12: A leader is dedicated to the wider
community
Anita Roddick, Ann Gloag, Prue Leith, Ann Wood and Patsy Bloom
are the most notable women who showed a social conscience in
their dedication to the broader community. Their help of the
young, the poor, the unemployed, the medically needy, the
socially deprived, the handicapped, the marginated, the old,
included sharing their wealth with them, dealing with their
pressing needs, finding them work and creating other
opportunities for them as employees, suppliers and consumers.
Anita Roddick summed it up when she said: “Open up a
typical management book and you will find it hard to avoid words
like leadership, team-building, company culture or customer
service. However, you will be lucky to find words like community,
social justice, human rights, dignity, love or spirituality – the
emerging language of business.”
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