4. Introduce mentoring programs for women
As one senior executive once commented, “I have been coached to death, but I have never been mentored.” This is backed up by research which found that 62% of men had a mentor at the CEO or senior executive level compared to 52% of women.
A good mentor will ideally be a senior executive within the organization who will share their knowledge, experience, and network to help the mentee to navigate their career and clarify their goals. They will also provide sponsorship by opening doors and recommending their mentee for certain assignments that will increase their visibility within the organization. A coach, on the other hand, will focus on the individual’s skills and competencies. By giving women more access to coaching instead of mentoring, an organization may be inadvertently harming their chances of success: having a mentor who is a senior executive increases a person’s chance of promotion and securing a bigger pay bump.
One challenge is that men sometimes feel uncomfortable mentoring women. I once held a workshop on mentoring with a company based here in Switzerland and noticed there was some unease around the topic. The participants told me they worried about office gossip and even what their wives would say if they actively worked to advance the careers of younger, attractive women. To overcome this, and avoid any misunderstanding, organizations need to raise awareness of their mentoring programs and what these involve. This includes making clear that it is perfectly normal for senior executives to meet with younger people as part of mentoring, regardless of their gender.
5. Work to correct meta-perceptions
There are some remedies women can adopt to try to balance out the misconceptions resulting from pervasive stereotypes. One approach to get around the perceived lack of confidence is to use techniques to signal attention and interest. For example, when people come to work together on a project for the first time, status is ascribed to the various team members. By failing to speak up early on, women are more likely to be ascribed zero status. One way to signal interest and thus rack up some status points can be by asking a good question. Another way is daring to disagree with someone, because by doing so, others in the group will ascribe you confidence. This can sometimes be challenging for women who are often conditioned from an early age to crave the approval of parents and educators.
American psychologist Carol Dweck has suggested this is because girls tend to have longer attention spans and more advanced verbal and social skills than boys in the early school years making them more likely to receive praise. Boys, on the other hand, often get more mixed feedback. Since failing and trying harder next time are essential to confidence building, Dweck suggests this makes boys more immune towards negative feedback by the time they reach adulthood and less worried about the consequences of getting things wrong. To counter this, society needs to make sure that we praise girls for the energy they invest in certain activities, rather than rewarding them for perfect scores on their homework, so that they lessen the fear of making mistakes.
In summary, it’s time to debunk some of the myths that blame women for hindering their own progress and take a closer look at how we can overhaul workplace practices to correct the misconceptions that are blocking their success.