Stagnant Pay Gap Data Reminds Us of Steps We Can Take

Equal Pay Day is upon us once again on April 10. Have you thought about what your company is doing to help crack the gender pay..

Integrated Leadership: Asking the Right Questions

The Integrated Leadership model embraces and leverages the strengths of both male and female leaders. As mentioned in my last post, Integrated Leadership: Building on the Benefits, recent research revealed that its not brain differences that are behind the diverse approaches each gender takes when it comes to thinking, communications, and problem-solving.

Instead, such differences may be based on social experiences and other factors that women and men experience. Regardless of why there may be gender-based nuances in problem-solving approaches and decision-making/communication styles, when organizations adopt a more gender-balanced approach to leading others, there is a significant, positive effect: better business outcomes.

Integrated Leadership: Building on the Benefits

There are many reasons to foster an Integrated Leadership culture—one that values, leverages, and blends the strengths of both women and men—in your organization. Gender-balanced leadership perspectives can lead to a wide range of benefits at the organizational, team, and individual levels.

The latest research published at the end of 2015 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tells us that men and women are not always different when it comes to thinking, communications, and problem-solving. However, studies have found that the diversity of strategies and approaches often seen between men and women go beyond gender and genetics.

Building a Business Case for Integrated Leadership

In my last post, “Why We Need Integrated Leadership”, I discussed several reasons why companies need to begin moving toward a more balanced, integrated approach to leadership. I explained how in our ever more complex and connected world, organizations no longer have the luxury of failing to tap into the full capacity of their leadership team. We need all voices on deck to create a unified and integrated group of leaders who can leverage each other’s unique strengths, while integrating both the practical and creative insights of different perspectives.

Why We Need Integrated Leadership

Not long ago, the CEO of a well-known IT company told me over coffee about losing a woman on his executive team who got hired away by another firm. The CEO (let’s call him Dan) explained that this female executive had been the “voice of the customer” for the leadership team, and had recently told the group that their key customer was unhappy—yet no one had listened to her. In fact, a fellow executive team member suggested that her assessment was off-base, as the company’s sales figures for the previous quarter were in good shape. But he was wrong and she was right: not only did the company experience a regrettable loss of their key client, but this important customer ending up taking their business to a competitor.

When It Comes to Women’s Leadership, Talk Continues But Action Remains Stalled

It was a familiar scene in Davos Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum took place in January: many men around the table and relatively few women. (Women represented only 18 percent of total delegates.)

What was a bit different, though, was the focus on the increasingly urgent need to achieve gender parity in organizations worldwide. CNBC reported that not only was the corporate gender gap among the top three hot topics discussed by the delegation, but the subject was also recognized as one of the most tweetable, generating 10,000 tweets during the conference.

How Time and Talent Affect Women and Men Differently

Much has been written recently about the different ways that women and men spend their time—particularly at home. The 2014 American Time Use Survey showed that women spend almost an hour more a day doing household chores than men. Whether it’s laundry, food prep, or interior cleaning, women spend more than twice as much time doing it as men.

In case you were thinking that things must be different now, a year later, in this regard, 2015 data has revealed more of the same. A new study from Eudemonia showed that 83 percent of women versus 65 percent of men report spending some time doing household activities such as housework, cooking, and household management. The study also pointed out that while men work 30 minutes longer at the office than women, women spend twice that amount of time dealing with home-related issues.

How Can We Do Better for Women’s Leadership in 2016?

I recently read an inspiring post on the Catalyst website by two female GE managers, Cara Hume and Nancy Dunn. In the post, Hume and Dunn explained how asking the simple question “How can we do better” led their senior leadership team to make significant changes in the company’s policies, benefits, and culture this year.

The post explains how the pair had reflected with their boss, Susan Peters, senior VP of HR at GE, on their experience of trying to juggle and flex their work with the rest of their life. Peters challenged them to think about how the company could do better when it came to parental leave, family care, flexible work arrangements, and more.

5 Strategies to Maximize Collaborative Intelligence in Any Organization

Collaborative intelligence—the collective determination to reach an identical objective by sharing knowledge and learning while building consensus—is becoming increasingly essential to organizational success. In my last post, I discussed why leaders need to understand and implement a collaborative model based on creating a culture of collaboration that becomes an integral part of their overall leadership strategy. I also shared two essential skills—moving away from top-down authority and building bridges of cooperation—that can help build a more collaborative team.

Collaborative Intelligence: The Competitive Advantage for Today’s Organizations

Here is an example of a typical call that I receive from our clients at SHAMBAUGH: An organization is undergoing significant change. To keep pace with the evolving marketplace, customer demands, and industry trends, they need to reexamine their existing culture and leadership models to successfully adapt. Often in such scenarios, the desire to evolve is prompted by the president or CEO attending a conference that referenced the importance of an inclusive and collaborative culture.

In one specific instance, a company president (whom I’ll call Steve) shared with me that his organization had just invested a lot of money in a new IT system that would now cross-integrate information across the organization. Would this do the trick to build a more integrated and collaborative environment, he asked me? I responded that while that’s part of the equation, it’s not the whole solution. What ultimately needs to drive this important shift, I told him, is your leadership—which means that your organization must reinforce the right leadership model to ensure that the proper mindset, behaviors, and culture are first in place. Doing so will ensure lasting results versus a quick fix.