Improving The Gender Balance At Shell - Building Gender Balanced Business

“Among the company’s senior level managers and executives, 13.6% were women as of year-end 2008, up from 10.5% in 2004. To combat this, the company has set a target of reaching 20% over the long term.”

Four years ago, Shell commissioned research into why more women did not stay at Shell and progress to the top. The result of this has been the embedding of a set of processes, which provide the backbone to the effort to reach the 20% target today.

There are many initiatives. But some notable ones include targets to place women on shortlists for posts in management and above, a women’s career development programme and gender training for managers. “More than 5,000 managers have gone through our gender culture courses,” says van Zanten, “which exposes them to the differences between women’s and men’s cultures and how it can impact behaviours.” The purpose is to get across that there are different ways of doing things and that one way should not exclude the other.

Stereotyping starts early

This is important, says van Zanten, because there is still a lot of stereotyping which starts at an early age which might damage a woman’s confidence. “Young women are not encouraged enough at school, teachers don’t spend enough time building their self-esteem particularly in Europe. There are not enough women professors as role models to help young women see that the sky’s the limit.”

So, van Zanten hopes that managers will become more sensitive to the different ways women approach work and life. “When you hear a woman say that her team performed very well, the next question should be: ‘Well, who managed the team? Who was in charge of making the team so visible and so successful?’ So, instead of recognising leaders who lead from the front, also recognise those who lead from behind”. Also, she adds, don’t call a woman aggressive when she is being assertive.

“When you hear a woman say that her team performed very well, the next question should be: ‘Well, who managed the team? Who was in charge of making the team so visible and so successful?’”

“I think most of my male colleagues would say they fully understand the case of diversity, that they see it and that they understand why we need to promote it. But they are still carrying around in their heads very deeply embedded mental models of what the balance between the sexes looks like.”

Loughman recognises that these kinds of shifts are very hard to move. To improve the gender balance at the higher levels, he believes two things must happen. First, it must be very clearly articulated that there is an added value in having more women in leadership. It needs to be viewed as a “value proposition” equivalent to any other that drives the value in the business. In politics it is clear that women vote and therefore there is a clear value in winning their support. There needs to be something similar in business.

On this, Loughman is very clear. Women bring critical skills and attributes to a team that makes it perform better. He has seen this take effect in Norske Shell, following the recruitment of more women to the board to comply with the country’s quota that at least 40% of a company’s board had to be comprised of women. “Women listen to what people actually say, they test for understanding and they look for the collaborative solution. You also get a lot of discussion on the emotional side. What is the mood in the company on this? How do people respond to this in terms of feelings and motivations?” This is very different, he adds, from a board of men, who sometimes can be seen to be most concerned with their “prestige in the board context.”

The “rule of two” – making sure women influence teams

He believes so strongly in the value of women to teams that Loughman applies the “rule of two”, striving to have at least two women appointed to a team. This makes sure that the female influence is brought to bear on the team. He believes that when men, no matter how sceptical, see the benefits of the new gender balance, they soon come to accept the business case.

In two cases, Loughman has had a chance to witness the contribution women have brought to teams (one at Shell and one external). “What I saw in both cases was a very different team dynamic. I saw the women bring their value systems with them, their ways of communicating, their peripheral vision on sensitive issues, their understanding of the team and their desire to solve problems as a team as opposed to having conversations in the corridor.” It convinced Loughman that they had to get away from tokenism and proactively seek more qualified women for his leadership team.

The second drive for change must come from society, says Loughman. Surprisingly perhaps, he says, Norway is a traditional society. Women do the housework and men replumb the house or fix the roof. The result, he says, is that men rarely take up the offer provided by the government for paternity leave (the parental leave in Norway is usually between nine and 12 months, making it possible for both parents to share the period between them). Therefore, he personally supports the argument for making it mandatory that men and women should share the parental leave to take care of their children.

“Women listen to what people actually say, they test for understanding and they look for the collaborative solution. You also get a lot of discussion on the emotional side. What is the mood in the company on this? How do people respond to this in terms of feelings and motivations?”

“The big challenge for women is in ‘navigating the balance’ between work and family life. Getting this right might mean accepting that you cannot run a refinery, which requires 24/7 presence, at a particular time in your life.”

There is no doubt that women bring much needed leadership capabilities to the tough business environment all businesses are experiencing today. Montana expresses the point well. “Anyone can manage in the good times but it takes real leadership to manage in hard times. The strengths women bring are around a higher level of empathy in terms of dealing with difficult situations and helping make sure people feel cared for, regardless of the outcomes. They also tend to have a fairly tough inner core, which can make them very resilient and able to work through tough times. And they often have a longer term view.”

It is hard to say how long it will take Shell to reach its 20% and raise the game further – but there is clearly an ingrained corporate commitment to diversity and inclusion, which will help. Can Shell measure the impact of its gender training programmes? “How do you measure the impact of rain that is falling?” is van Zanten’s female reply to a very masculine question. “You can’t but you can know whether things look right or improve over time.”