Are You Developing Enough Leaders?

One of the biggest things we’ve learned from the pandemic and the other challenges of the past few years, is that we all need to lead today. Leadership skills are critical at every level. But, in too many organizations, leadership development programs are still reserved primarily for employees already identified as “HiPo’s” – high-potential and high-performing employees. In other words, the employees who receive the most leadership development are the very ones who need it the least because there performance is already strong. In an influential article for Harvard Business Review, professors Navio Kwok and Winny Shen call this phenomenon “the leadership development paradox.” In the long-term, this approach affects the quality, diversity, and size of an organization’s pipeline of leaders. But we can address it by providing leadership training opportunities to a wider array of employees.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

How Strong Is Your Leadership Pipeline?

When a company decides whether to invest in leadership development for an employee, they directly shape that employee’s career path. Employees who receive leadership development are more likely to be promoted to senior level, high-exposure roles. Meanwhile, employees outside of that high-potential group are more likely to stay at their current performance level or even get worse — because they’re getting less access to the leadership development programs that could help them improve as well as opportunities for career advancement.                       

When only a select group of employees gets greater access to leadership development, organizations miss out on what others could potentially contribute. Although budget is a key consideration, can we afford to do this? Even small improvements across a broader population can have a big impact on overall company performance and cultivate a sustainable culture of growth and innovation.

According to DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2023, CEOs are already worried about how to develop the next generation of leaders — and only 12% of companies are confident that they have a strong bench of leaders who are prepared to step into key roles.

As a firm with a niche focused on developing women leaders, we’re also concerned about how the leadership development paradox may disproportionately affect women. Ambition has increased, as shown in the McKinsey/LeanIn.org Women in the Workplace 2023 report, which  found that eight out of 10 women want to get promoted. The numbers are even higher for women younger than 30 and women of color (93% and 88%, respectively).

However, the report also found that women are still under-represented at every level of leadership. They’re less likely to get that first promotion to manager than men are. (And the gap is even bigger for women of color.) With fewer women than men rising through the ranks, it only makes sense that fewer women reach the highest levels of leadership.

How to Develop More Leaders

To fix the leadership pipeline, we must offer leadership development more broadly — but in a way that satisfies each individual’s needs while addressing tight schedules and company budgets. 

We embedded those principles into our New Lens® learning platform, added the same expertise we’ve used to help 75% of our clients get promoted, and packaged it all into bite-sized lessons and collaborative learning that employees can easily fit into their days.

Beyond considering something like New Lens, use these strategies to strengthen your leadership pipeline:

• Rethink how you identify potential leaders. DDI recommends using digital assessments to identify hidden talent.  They explain that “leaders may not recognize potential if it doesn’t align with what leadership has traditionally looked like in the organization,” adding that in remote or hybrid environments, some leadership skills may be overlooked.

• Tap into your internal expertise. How are you making the most of the vast knowledge your people can share with each other? Mentorship and sponsorship are surprisingly underused tools for cultivating future leaders. Also look for opportunities to use peer-to-peer cross-training to build relationships and leadership skills.

• Make key experiences more accessible. It’s common for organizations to have roles that are seen as a springboard to higher leadership positions. Is your organization inadvertently funneling only certain groups to these jobs? For example, are women pushed toward marketing and HR vs. operations?

Your organization can unlock limitless potential by investing in more leadership development opportunities for your employees. We live and breathe these issues with our Fortune 500 clients. So, as you consider your company’s short and long-term development needs, schedule a call with us. We would be happy to discuss how you can strengthen your pipeline of talent by unleashing more employees’ potential.

Are You Underutilizing These Powerful Ways to Close the Leadership Gap?

I have some bad news and some good news about mentorship and sponsorship at work. First, the bad news: These two strategies are extremely underused. According to Gallup, only 40% of employees have workplace mentors, and 23% have sponsors. The good news? Improving these numbers is low-hanging fruit and holds huge potential for increasing the number of women in senior leadership, enhancing engagement and retention and even bolstering the bottom line at your organization.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic after serving as one of the mentors at the Dallas Business Journal’s recent Mentoring Monday, a nationwide event sponsored by The Business Journals that brings together successful female business leaders and women who want to tap into their advice and insights.

Image by Sue Styles from Pixabay

As a longtime advocate for advancing women, I’m excited that we’re learning more about how to create meaningful results for individuals and their employers through relationships with mentors and sponsors. In honor of Women’s History Month, let’s take a deeper dive into this topic and make the case for your organization to invest in programs that integrate the power of both mentorship and sponsorship.

What Is the Difference Between Mentors and Sponsors?

Mentors and sponsors serve valuable, but not identical, roles in your network. Mentors typically serve as role models, providing advice and perspective to help you develop your skills and navigate challenging situations. Mentors can be at any level in the organization, with peer and reverse mentoring becoming more frequently used approaches. 

Sponsors, on the other hand, have clout and yield considerable influence on key decision-makers. Sponsors also give you critical exposure to opportunities and visibility to other influential leaders, and advocate on your behalf. 

As a longtime executive coach and the creator of a leadership development platform, I’m not surprised by how underutilized mentorship and sponsorship are. I’ve had many clients fall into the trap of thinking their good work is enough. It often takes people a while to realize that who they know is just as important as the quality of their work. They overlook how much their relationships give them access to resources, information and influence that they need to get work done and to advance their careers.

The Power of Support at Work

While mentorship and sponsorship are good for everyone, I’m especially intrigued by their potential to address an issue that many organizations struggle with: the leadership gap between men and women.

According to the Women in the Workplace 2023 report  from McKinsey in partnership with LeanIn.org, women are underrepresented at all stages of the leadership pipeline. While 48% of all entry-level employees are women, only 40% of managers are. The gap keeps getting broader all the way to the C-Suite, where men outnumber women by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

That’s a problem on many levels. Researchers have found that companies with more female leaders make more money, are more socially responsible and have better customer service. Female CEOs can even drive stock prices. Companies recognize these benefits, and many are increasing their efforts around leadership development for women.

These programs must include opportunities to develop relationships with mentors and sponsors. When you look at data from Gallup, the Women in the Workplace report and other recent research, it becomes clear why these relationships can be so beneficial for women’s careers:

• Women are more ambitious now than they were before the pandemic. In 2019, about 70% of women wanted to get promoted to the next level. Today, that figure is 81%. (For women under 30 — your organization’s rising generation of leaders —93% want promotions.) In other words, high-potential women want to know that they have a future at your organization. Gallup found that when an employee has a mentor or sponsor, they’re much more likely to feel that they have a clear path forward.

• Learning and growth are deeply important to your workforce. More than 9 out of 10 employees said they would stay at their company longer if it invested in helping them learn. Mentorship and sponsorship help address that demand. According to Gallup, employees with mentors are twice as likely to say they’ve had recent opportunities to learn and grow.

• Perhaps the greatest potential for mentorship and sponsorship programs lies in helping more women find sponsors. Currently, 25% of men have a sponsor at work, while only 22% of women do. According to Herminia Ibarra of London Business School:

Too few women are reaching the top of their organizations, and a big reason is that they are not getting the high-stakes assignments that are prerequisite for a shot at the C-suite. Often, this is due to a lack of powerful sponsors demanding and ensuring that they get these stepping-stone jobs.

Ibarra has also found that men and women describe their relationships with supporters differently: Women talk about how these relationships increase their self-understanding, while men talk about others endorsing them and helping them plan their career advancement.

How to Improve Mentorship and Sponsorship

So how can your organization maximize the power of mentorship and sponsorship to advance women leaders?

• Examine how the rise of hybrid work has affected who receives mentorship or sponsorship in your organization. For example, men are more likely than women to receive mentorship and sponsorship when they work onsite, according to the Women in the Workplace report.

• Start thinking about how to weave elements of mentorship or sponsorship into existing programs without overburdening participants or executives. While support relationships that develop on their own are great, formal programs can create even more impressive results, Gallup found.

• Whether or not you have a formal program, make sure your organization is teaching coaching skills. Potential mentors and sponsors are more likely to help when they have the right tools to do so.

• Consider a tool like the New Lens® platform that facilitates mentoring conversations. Our app leverages the power of both peer learning and manager feedback.

Finally, remember that we understand the power of mentorship and sponsorship at Newberry Solutions and we welcome the chance to answer your questions and share how New Lens and our other tools can empower you to support women leaders. Schedule a New Lens demo now, or get in touch with us for more information.

Fixing the ‘Broken Rung’ for Women at Work

You’ve probably heard of the glass ceiling for women at work. But what we really should be focusing on is the broken rung.

That’s according to the Women in the Workplace 2023 report, from McKinsey in partnership with LeanIn.org. The report debunks workplace myths about women (I wrote about its findings regarding women and ambition recently.) One of the biggest myths is that the glass ceiling is the biggest obstacle women face in reaching senior leadership. But what McKinsey and LeanIn found — and what we’ve observed firsthand here at Newberry Solutions — is that the barriers to women start far earlier in their careers.

Photo by RDNE Stock project

The broken rung discussed in the report is the fact that fewer women than men get that first key promotion to manager. That puts fewer women in the leadership pipeline, which ultimately leads to a shortage of female candidates for senior leadership positions. As the report states:

Because of the gender disparity in early promotions, men end up holding 60 percent of manager-level positions in a typical company, while women occupy 40 percent. Since men significantly outnumber women, there are fewer women to promote to director, and the number of women decreases at every subsequent level.

How big of a problem is the broken rung? McKinsey and LeanIn found that for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 87 women were. The gap is even bigger for women of color: 73 were promoted to manager for every 100 men who were. This problem is not new. The Women in the Workplace report has flagged it for nine consecutive years. But we clearly need to do more to address it. As a firm that’s passionate about helping women succeed — and that has a strong track record of helping them get promoted — this is one of our top priorities. So we want to highlight McKinsey and LeanIn’s recommendations on fixing the broken rung — and add some of our own.

How to Help Women Get Promoted

• Realize that the problem is not with women and their ambition. Some leaders may brush off the broken rung by claiming that women don’t want promotions and are more likely to step away from work. But that’s outdated — and inaccurate — thinking. The Women in the Workplace report shows that women are actually more ambitious now than they were before the Covid-19 pandemic. (We’ve seen the same thing in our work with high-performing women.) Roughly equal numbers of women and men want promotions. That’s even true for women who work remotely or on a hybrid schedule.

• Address performance bias. All too often, women are hired or promoted based on what they’ve done, while men are hired or promoted based on potential. In their report, McKinsey and LeanIn recommend taking “de-biasing” steps. For example, require that managers give their rationale behind performance evaluations and recommendations for promotions.

• Make development more equitable. Do the current learning and development programs at your organization include enough women who have the potential to be promoted? And does the content of those programs focus on what women need to get promoted? For some inspiration, check out our case study “Empowering Women to Reach Their Leadership Potential.” It tells the story of how a Fortune 50 company used our New Lens® learning platform to prepare more women for promotions.

Research is clear that companies benefit from having women in senior leadership roles. But to accomplish this goal, you have to take action much earlier in the leadership pipeline. This is one of the reasons we created New Lens, and we’re excited that it’s becoming part of the solution for the broken-rung problem. To learn more and set up a demonstration, visit newlensleadership.com.

The Truth About Women and Ambition

True or false? During the Covid-19 pandemic, women have become less ambitious than men are.

False. Very false.

But if you answered “true,” I can understand why. Perhaps you’ve seen news articles about the “lazy girl jobs” trend or women leaving the workforce.

Photo by Jopwell

Those headlines, however, tell only part of the story. The Women in the Workplace 2023 report, from McKinsey in partnership with LeanIn.org, fills in some gaps in the narrative. This report debunks myths about women at work, including the one that they lack ambition.

Because we’re a firm with a special passion for developing women leaders, the Women in the Workplace report is always required reading for us. We believe it should be for your organization as well. Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a closer look at the report’s findings, compare them with what we see firsthand through our work, and share recommendations on cultivating women leaders in your organization. And we’ll start with the myth of women’s declining ambitions.

8 Out of 10 Women Want Promotions

The pandemic was an enormous blow to women at work. More women than men lost their jobs, and women experienced more stress and burnout than men did. But the Women in the Workplace report found that women are actually more ambitious now than they were before the pandemic. In 2019, about 70% of women wanted to get promoted to the next level. Today, that figure is 81% — identical to the percentage of men who want to get promoted. Younger women and women of color are even more ambitious. Among women under thirty, 93% are aiming for a promotion, while 88% of women of color are.

The report also refutes the perception that women who work remotely or on a hybrid schedule are less ambitious. In fact, they’re a little more likely to want promotions than women who work fully on-site. Furthermore, across all types of work schedules (remote, hybrid, on-site), women are just as likely to want a promotion as men in comparable arrangements.

What We’re Hearing from Women

The Women in the Workplace report’s findings on ambition track closely with what we’ve observed firsthand. Our work frequently involves helping top organizations cultivate women leaders. (For some examples, check out our case studies on how companies are using our New Lens® app to invest in women’s development.) We’ve coached countless women and spoken at events for women (such as the D CEO Emerging Women Leadership Network Program). Beyond  Newbery Solutions, I’m also involved with nonprofits and other entities that focus on elevating women, including Texas Women’s Foundation, the Senator Jane Nelson Institute for Women's Leadership at Texas Woman’s University, the United Way Fund for Women and Children, and 50/50 Women on Boards. So I have a lot of conversations with women about what’s happening in their careers and in their workplaces.

And what I hear from them echoes what McKinsey and LeanIn.org found. Women care deeply about their work and are constantly looking for ways they can make a bigger impact. They’re excited about flexible schedules that help them manage their personal lives without shortchanging their careers. The McKinsey/Lean In statistics aren’t the only findings that demonstrate women’s ambition. Women are starting more businesses than they did before the pandemic. Women are also more likely to attend college and obtain their degrees than men are.

Build a Pipeline of Women Leaders

As we celebrate women’s growing ambitions, we must also look for ways to translate these ambitions into gains for women at the top levels of leadership. While we’ve made some progress in closing the C-suite gender gap, women still hold less than one-third of these roles

The problem, according to the Women in the Workplace report, is a broken leadership pipeline. Women are less likely to get that first promotion to manager than men are. (And the gap is even bigger for women of color.) With fewer women than men rising through the ranks, it only makes sense that fewer women reach the highest levels of leadership.

 This discrepancy ultimately hurts organizations. We see in the McKinsey/Lean In report that there are great numbers of ambitious women out there who are eager to lead. When these women don’t get promoted, their employers miss out on untold potential. 

So how can we make our workplaces more equitable and help women get the promotions they aspire to?

• Talk about the Women in the Workplace report with your team. This discussion can help surface any misconceptions about women and ambition that your employees may have.

• Make leadership development training accessible to more employees. Companies rarely have budgets to provide coaching to everyone who wants it. It’s more likely to be reserved for senior leaders. That leaves out vast numbers of high-potential employees who could benefit. This was one of our main motivations for creating New Lens.

• Implement employee resource groups (ERGs) for women and women of color. According to the McKinsey/Lean In report, 93% of companies with strong pipelines of women leaders had ERGs with content tailored for women. That’s compared with 83% for companies overall. For women of color, the difference is even more dramatic: 61% of companies with strong pipelines have targeted ERGs, compared with 44% of companies overall.

Increasing the ranks of women leaders is a big topic, and one we’ll continue to explore in upcoming articles. Got questions? Please share them with me on LinkedIn. You could help shape our future content. In the meantime, check out the full Women in the Workplace 2023 report and explore how New Lens® democratizes access to leadership development.

Does Your Communication Style Show That You're Ready for a Promotion?

The way that you communicate at work sends big messages about your capabilities as a leader. Do your messages elevate your competence or undercut it? Let's take a closer look at your communication style and how it affects your career. In particular, I want to help you recognize and overcome a common communication mistake that trips up even the smartest professionals.

When it comes to deciding who gets promoted, who gets a raise or who lands that high-visibility project, your boss is looking for someone who can communicate strategically. But what exactly does that mean? A strategic communicator consistently links ideas to the big picture, tailors the message for the audience and demonstrates empathy.

By contrast, tactical communicators can get "lost in the weeds" — often in the world of their subject matter expertise. Their passion or desire to be thorough or educate others can bog them down in the details when they share ideas and suggestions. And pretty soon, people have lost interest.

Are You Strategic or Tactical?

Here are a few examples of how strategic and tactical communicators handle things differently:

Tactical: Is often “waiting to talk” vs. listening. Starts thinking about how to respond even before the other person has finished asking a question. They have a lot to share and they're eager to get it out!

Strategic: Takes time to notice and understand what is being asked, including the question behind the question. Provides information the other person really needs, even if it goes beyond the scope of the original question.

Tactical: Gives exhaustive answers to questions to demonstrate competence or because they believe the other person needs all that information in order to make a decision. Ideas are often presented sequentially, building up to the conclusion or direct answer.

Strategic: Responds with the one or two points that are most important to understand and allows others to ask for more details if they need them.

Tactical: Focused more on what they know. Sees things more from their own perspective and what they want others to understand.

Strategic: Keeps the audience in mind and how to tailor the message accordingly. Understands the fine balance between what they care about and what's relevant to others.

These two styles of communication create very different perceptions of your leadership ability.

If you tend to be more tactical and “in the weeds,” people may tune you out and miss valuable parts of your message. Instead of appreciating your expertise, they may become impatient and irritated. They may even start working around you and turn to others who can provide input more concisely. Worst of all, you risk developing a reputation as someone who is a deep subject matter expert but can’t take on a higher-level, more strategic role.

On the other hand, if you can communicate strategically, people are more likely to think that you understand business priorities and can advance the organization’s goals.

This week, pay attention to the way you communicate with your colleagues. How do they respond to you? And what does your communication style convey about your leadership? To further build your communication skills, pick up a copy of "Communicating With Impact" from my Leadership EDGE℠ series.

5 Ways to Self-Promote While Working Remotely

Is remote work making you feel out of sight, out of mind with your boss and other key leaders?

A recent article in Harvard Business Review argues that while working from home creates benefits like flexibility, it also carries unique pitfalls for women that can hold us back from promotions and pay raises.

In my last article, I gave you some tactics for dealing with one of those pitfalls: increasing demands at work and at home. This week, let's tackle another key question of our new WFH reality: How do you build relationships, get recognized for your contributions and advance your career when you and your colleagues can’t just run into each other in the office? Here are five of my best practices.

1. Track Your Accomplishments

I have always recommended keeping track of your successes. But it's now more important than ever. With our days so busy, it's easy to overlook all the ways you're creating value. So make it a point to regularly jot down your accomplishments — even if some of them don’t seem like a big deal. Then write down the impact of each accomplishment to help you notice its relevance.  You’ll find that even those small successes can have a big impact. For example, just one productive meeting with an influential leader can set the stage for a strong working relationship.

When you track your accomplishments, you will have them top of mind – which will make it easier to communicate them to others. Trust me, it's also a great morale booster as you realize the difference you’re making!

2. Strategically Communicate Your Value

After you start logging your accomplishments, the next step is to tell others about them. Don’t assume that others will simply notice your hard work and recognize you for it. Remember, your boss has a lot on her plate, too. "Tastefully tooting your own horn" isn't bragging. It's helping your boss understand all the ways you add value so that she can more fully leverage them.

Without the impromptu interactions that happen in an office, you have to be even more intentional about communicating your accomplishments and their significance. That could mean being ready to share one of your team’s successes on your next Zoom call. As a bonus, it also recognizes your team members. Or you could simply email your boss regular updates about your progress as an FYI (which she can easily forward to others).

3. Reframe Career Conversations

If your organization has gone through restructuring or downsizing, you might feel awkward about asking your boss for time to discuss your career goals. But you can do this in a way that's helpful for both of you.

As always, you're more likely to get promoted or achieve other career goals when you make clear to others that you're thinking about more than what you want. That's especially true today. Your boss will be more receptive when you frame your message more like this:

Given the recent organizational changes, how can I best use my skills and experience to make a difference? I want to continue to grow as a leader and add more value to the company. 

4. Remember What Works for You

While our work environment has changed, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to building relationships or raising your visibility. The same fundamental principles hold true. You may just need to adapt them a little for the work-at-home world.

That's the message I gave one of my former clients when we caught up recently. She had just started a new job and was worried about how to get to know her new colleagues and work effectively with them without ever meeting them face to face.

Here's the surprising thing: As an experienced executive in an externally facing role, she has built her career on her ability to successfully cultivate strong, authentic relationships. But during this period of significant change, she kept thinking about what may be difficult instead of focusing on what she already knows that can help her. 

Take a moment now to jot down strategies you have used to increase your visibility and advance your career so far. How would you adapt those strategies for the current environment? Some strategies you may not need to adapt at all. For example, you can establish a regular cadence of sharing one or two accomplishments each week, forward positive feedback you’ve received, or be fully present to engage more impactfully.

5. Keep Growing as a Leader

It's totally understandable if you haven't had a spare moment in the past six months to even consider professional development. But hopefully you've started to create some capacity in your schedule to reflect about where you are, where you want to go and how to get there. Investing in building your skills and expertise is one way to strategically advance your career, differentiate yourself and boost your confidence. 

Even before the pandemic, online learning opportunities were dramatically expanding. Think about the type of virtual experience that could help you develop your leadership skills. Start by checking out my WOW! (Women on the Way to peak performance) Program℠. I've delivered WOW! at top corporations, and it is now available as a self-paced program that you can complete on your own, with a colleague or through your own informal learning circle.