Gender Intelligence : Breakthrough Strategies for Increasing Diversity and Improving Your Bottom Line (9780062307422) by Annis Barbara; Merron Keith

Author:Annis, Barbara; Merron, Keith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

As a doctoral student at Harvard, coauthor Keith got in on the ground floor of the corporate culture movement. His doctoral advisor was none other than Terry Deal, author of the bestseller Corporate Cultures, which made that whole concept famous. As a result, Keith has done an extraordinary amount of culture change work in companies around the globe for thirty years. Beginning in the early 1980s, in Keith’s experience he found that most all culture change work begins with a vision in the form of a new set of values. Unfortunately, what often follows is that leaders want to showcase their new values on posters and splash them across their website, reshaping the branding of the company.

It doesn’t work to showcase values that you have not yet put in practice. Employees experience the disconnect, rolling their eyes at the company they see on the website, thinking, This isn’t true. We don’t live by these values. In fact, you, the leadership, don’t live by these values. The effort to display values on mugs, posters, and marketing materials does little to produce internal change; oftentimes all it does is bring into sharp relief how much the company isn’t living them! In our work, it is at this point that one telling difference between male and female leaders begins to emerge.

Male leaders often don’t want to talk about that disconnect. They’re uncomfortable with the observation that they’re not walking the talk, so much so that it’s being put out on the table for discussion. The most courageous of leaders face the music, but in our experience, most male leaders do not. Most female leaders, by contrast, tend to welcome the dialogue more so than men. Declaring that adopting new values requires in-depth self-examination, women are more often up for the challenge. As this has happened time and again, we’ve come to feel that it’s almost as if the male leaders, once they declare their intentions and have placed their values on display, feel that it’s now up to the organization to live those values and the issue no longer requires their own attention. The declaration is the end point for their involvement, whereas for many female leaders, it’s the beginning.

These leaders’ perspective undoubtedly reflects the fact that a self-reflective perspective in a hard-driving work environment is not highly valued among most men. What women view as important examination they call “navel-gazing,” “off strategy,” and “unproductive.” The process just doesn’t get to the results stage fast enough.

In an alpha-male culture, where male tendencies are amplified to an extreme, “reflection” is considered wimpy and weak, as is asking everyone to offer his or her opinion. Programs designed to create more gender awareness often fail because many men go through the motions, never really believing that the diversity program or effort is needed, and maybe even thinking it’s a hindrance to progress on more important organizational goals.

What It Takes to Get There

What does it take for leaders like Bjorn to make the shift and work past

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