After four decades in the public and private sector, all in male-dominated industries—the Foreign Service, Investment Banking and Consulting—I think it’s time for a new approach to women’s leadership training. Instead of focusing on how to help women “catch up” and “level the playing field”, let’s help them embody the new leadership competencies and behaviors that all leaders will need in the new economy.
Don’t get me wrong. Today’s current training for women professionals striving for success in a male-dominant culture focuses on constructive, necessary skills and behaviors like negotiating, finding mentors and sponsors, building executive presence, networking, and self-promotion. This approach goes hand in hand with a parallel focus by companies to tackle their talent management systems and processes in order to re-engineer unconscious bias out of decisions around hiring, promotion and work assignments. However, after hundreds of millions of dollars, pounds, and euros of leadership training, we are not moving women fast enough through the talent pipeline to senior leadership and board positions.