Women in leadership - Building Gender Balanced Business

Two highly successful and impressive women prove that promoting female talent is a winning strategy. Both of them interviewed by WOMEN-omics, have developed distinctive and powerful talent management strategies based on a nurturing, flexible workplace.

Jasmine Whitbread, the CEO of Save the Children, concludes that promoting women to the top of organisations is a mission-critical issue. She goes further by creating a modern, flexible culture that is attractive to dual-career men and women. At her organisation, she has attracted top male directors by offering them the option of flexible working. One of them works from home one day a week, the other takes most of Friday off every week to look after his children. She has also ensured they recruited more women Trustees by looking at women-only lists. The result was that they found an immensely talented pool of women to draw from.

Karren Brady, Managing Director of Birmingham City Football Club has written several books and spoken with inspiration many times about her remarkable career in the macho world of soccer.

What is less well known is how she has nurtured an astonishing number of highly talented women in her management team, all of whom have risen to the top. They range from Football Secretary, responsible for signing players and overseeing match fixtures to the top positions in retail, marketing and ticketing. Brady says that where men see problems, she sees “potential”. Men might worry that female candidates will need flexible working arrangements. Brady sees beyond this and helps to make sure they get what they need: an interesting job and childcare. Her HR Director, for example, one of the youngest such directors in the country, is available to help anyone in the Club find a good nanny for their children if they need her advice.

She sees the business benefit for all this. The team of women – who make up 75% of her management team – are hugely talented and Brady has managed to snap them up, denying other clubs the same talent.

Brady believes there are significant differences in the way men and women behave at work. Pulling no punches, she says that men are more political than women. You don’t have to watch your back, she says, with women. She also asserts that women are natural team players and nurturers.

In contrast, Whitbread does not believe there are significant differences. We are all people, she says. However, she does think that old gender stereotypes do hold people back. She believes men can be just as collaborative but often have to act tougher to live up to a stereotypical view of masculinity. Alpha-women, she says, can play both sides. They can be charming and they can be hard-headed at the same time.

But they both agree on one important thing. Organisational cultures need to veer away from the old clock-watching world where workers hang their jackets on their chairs so as to show that they are “at work”. Both women don’t care about that. They want to see results and are happy to offer people the work flexibility they need. They know it makes good business sense.