Are you managing female employees as well as you think?
Regardless of how fairly you think you treat your male and female employees, research indicates that managers may unknowingly damper women’s career enthusiasm and hinder their performance.
Here’s what all leaders should know about effectively managing their female employees for long-term success.
Learn about their future ambitions as early as you can. A study by Bain & Company followed the career goals of 1,000 men and women from the time they graduated college, until they’d spent a few years in the working world. Before they started their careers, 43% of the women studied wanted to achieve an executive-level position at some point in their career, compared to just 34% of the men.
But when the same group was asked the same question about their professional aspirations a few years into their careers, female interest in achieving executive leadership dropped significantly: Just 16% of the women still wanted to rise to the highest ranks—but the men’s interest in doing so hadn’t waned.
Further, females reported confidence in their ability to achieve a leadership role had dropped by half; the confidence levels of the men hadn’t wavered.
What dampened the women’s spirits so significantly after just a few years in the workforce? Bain partner Julie Coffman thinks it has a lot to do with managers’ failure to understand where women want to take their careers.
“Oftentimes those one-on-one conversations are spent on tasks, as opposed to really seeking out opportunities to help women develop the skills and the confidence they need to keep moving forward,” says Coffman.
Managers can make a major impact on their female employees’ long-term development by making a point to form a plan for the long-term: Understand where she wants to go when she starts the job—and consistently check in with how her interests, confidence and skills have developed.
Use part of every one-on-one to discuss the small but impactful steps she can take to get a littler closer to her destination—even if it’s decades away.
Be a connector. The Bain researchers also believe that women lose their enthusiasm for leadership simply because they lack role models. (Regardless of how progressive and nontraditional your culture may be, take a moment to look around at the percentage of male leaders, compared to females.)
On top of the disproportionate number of executive females, access to the role models can be an issue, too—making it tough to establish mentor-mentee relationships.
Managers can help female employees maintain their enthusiasm for success by facilitating introductions to females who have been where they hope to go.
Whether you send a simple email to your female staffer and a female colleague who has risen through the ranks to broker an introduction, or work with other female leaders in your company to host networking events for women of all roles in your company, you can help to break down the barriers female employees face.
Give females the opportunity to do what they do best. A study by Gallup revealed that despite that less than 35% of Americans have a female manager, those that do are more engaged than those who report to a male boss.
According to the researchers, the reason for increased engagement has a lot to do with the fact that females tend to be better communicators than men. Female managers tend to give more feedback, encourage long-term development of employees and give more clear direction.
Allow female employees the opportunity to try their hand at management when they join your team—even if it’s on a small scale, like taking charge of a project or a departmental activity.
These small introductions into leadership roles can help them gain a sense for the management gifts they may already possess (but don’t know they do).
That small boost of confidence may be just what they need to keep reaching for the top of the corporate ladder.
