Women in the C Suite.....

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Fintech, Healthcare or Professional Services but especially in Payroll which is traditionally a female-dominated field, there is still a clear lack of women in Partner roles and senior positions. I’m very proud to be associated with a few that have made it and pave the way for others to do the same. They also exemplify a lot of my thinking below and will recognise themselves! So please take this as a nod of appreciation towards your achievements.

I think we all know at this point that diversity – of gender, race, age, neurodiversity and life experience – leads to better outcomes. According to McKinsey research, companies with 30% or more female leadership consistently outperform those with less diverse leadership.

So why is that? Likely many reasons, but I believe a big part of it is the different perspectives we bring to the table. Women have, what a highly accomplished friend of mine likes to call a ‘soft power’, which companies need to get better at realising and utilising in the boardroom. Without making any claims about whether this is due to genetics or upbringing, women often come in with a more collaborative approach, different perspectives and ways of communicating them.

It’s a view that is particularly important to remember in sales as well. Different communication styles will suit different situations, and if nothing else – your team should be as diverse as your prospects are! In a team with one singular viewpoint, you risk missing opportunities that someone with a different viewpoint could have identified.

Knowing how important diversity is to business growth, why is there still resistance and lack of ownership around this?

One possible reason that gets bandied about frequently is impostor syndrome. The onus is put on women to be more confident and shout about their achievements. But looking at myself, and speaking to many C-level colleagues, I don’t find that a lot of us do feel impostor syndrome. Issues we’ve encountered, people’s reactions and behaviours to us have impacted and had more to do with us not having our voices heard which consequently has a detrimental effect.

And the Harvard Business Review agrees that impostor syndrome isn’t as big of an issue as it’s made out to be – in fact, the issue seems to be less that women don’t believe that they can do it, but that the people around them don’t believe they can do it. So being in the right environment to encourage and then promote is vital. And we can only hope that a business is sensible enough to pay equally be that person male or female.

Also, interestingly we hear less about the Donning Kruger effect which I’m sure we have all experienced on many occasions in our careers, I have hired a few too many people who on paper and in the interview overestimated their own capabilities and blinded me and colleagues by their level of confidence, only to then NOT deliver in the role. They get found out early when not producing the goods, showing that confidence doesn’t always equal competency.

When I reflect on this for myself, articulating what I've truly accomplished doesn’t sit comfortably. Because I go by the mentally of walk the walk, I admit I don’t necessarily talk the talk and beginning to do that takes a huge amount of effort, including professional coaching over recent years. It's equally important for me to deliver this in a very real and authentic way.

This is by no means to say that gaining confidence isn’t important. Something that I see as a big part of my role as a CRO is building confidence in all the team around me, regardless of who they are and making sure that they can continue their journey secure realisation of their own talents. And here’s where I do see a gender difference, in that a lot of men are very positive about their abilities, even before they have the results to back it up. Whereas women are very capable of presenting their achievements, but rarely want to extrapolate from that to shouting about themselves.

What can we actually do to implement more diversity? It’s a multi-faceted issue that requires many different approaches, but from my perspective, the more experience I gain the more I understand the importance of being visible. Seeing competent, accomplished women talking about their own journey is something that can inspire and give younger women new ideas of what is possible for them especially if they have had a less traditional career path like my own. I personally don’t particularly like presenting or having that public face via social but I’m realising that it’s something I must do, for the betterment of the entire industry specifically as a woman.