Professor Susan Vinnicombe, OBE

Women in Surgery Conference 1 December 2008

Women and Leadership

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• Myths• Women directors in the UK• Does it matter?• Womens’ leadership styles

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Myth 1Women aren’t interested

In a study of more than 900 senior levelWomen and men from Fortune 1000 companies,

Catalyst found that women and men have equal desires to have the CEO job

(Catalyst, 2004)

Myths around women and top leadership

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Myth 2Women aren’t seen as Leaders

61% senior women quote style differences as a barrier to advancement (compared to 26% CEOs)

94% senior women see developing a style with which male managers are comfortable as a key career strategy for advancement.

(Opportunity Now 2000)

Myths around women and top leadershipMyths around women and top leadership

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Myth 3Women haven’t got the right experience

Male CEOs say there aren’t more women on boards because they lack general management experience and they haven’t been in the pipeline long enough

Female directors say there aren’t more women on boards because of male stereotyping

(Catalyst 1999)

Myths around women and top leadership

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  Male (n = 72)

Female (n = 72)

Financial Institutions

31.9% 44.4%

Management Consultancy

13.9% 27.8%

Accountant 20.8% 19.4%Law 6.9% 15.3%Political 4.2% 11.1%Academia 5.6% 12.5%

Public Sector 18.1% 31.9%

Voluntary/Charity Sector 

13.9% 22.2%

Other/Government 13.9% 23.6%

Work experience of new FTSE 100 directors2001 - 2004

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  Male (n = 72)

Female (n = 72)

FTSE100 41.7% 22.2%

FTSE101-350 12.5% 16.7%

Minor Board 38.9% 62.5%

Previous directorship experience

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Myth 4Women don’t take risks

Data Women are more likely than men to be appointed onto corporate boards when the companies share

prices have fallen

(Ryan and Haslam, 2005)

Myths around women and top leadership

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Myth 5Highly educated women are opting out of the workforce

to become full time parents

Data Women managers intentions to leave were based on a perceived lack of career opportunities within their work

organisations, not on family reasons.

(Stroh et al, 1996)

Myths around women and top leadership

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2008

30% – 60% graduate entry is female

30% of managers are female

18% of senior managers are female

14.9% of NEDs of FTSE 100are female

4.8% of Exec Directors of FTSE 100 are female

5 Female CEO FTSE 100

13% Exec Committee Directors are female

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• Lack of a transparent, open selection process (80% NEDs through personal invitation of Chairman)

• No advertising of posts• Some recent females appointed - struggling• Key routes to the board-general management, operations,

finance. (Women in HR and legal consistently overlooked)• Poor briefs by Chairmen• Search consultants seen to have their favourites

Factors explaining lack of women directors

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• By 2010 just 20% of the workforce of the UK will be white male and under 45. 80% of workforce growth will be among women. Women will form a significant part of the available talent pool. If we select our leaders from only half the population – waste of talent

• 71% of the ‘main shoppers’ are women• Women own 48% Britain’s personal wealth and this will rise to 60%

in 2025• Companies with women on the board perform better financially

(ROE) and have better corporate governance• Better corporate decision making. The biggest difference shown by

Canadian Research is the significantly increased use of non-financial performance measures by boards with more women (e.g. innovation, CSR, employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, communication, strategy implementation)

Why does it matter that so few women makeit to the top

Women with Attitude A LEADER’S DOZEN:

12 THINGS WOMEN WITH ATTITUDE

DO AS LEADERS

(A leader is what a leader does)

Professor Susan Vinnicombe OBE

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1: A leader resolves ethical dilemmas

In the 1990s a British Airways sales team analysed rival airlines confidential booking information hacked off the reservation system, run by BA, that other airlines like Virgin fed into.

BA used the data to try and poach customers away from rivals.

As a middle manager in BA marketing, Barbara Cassani was enmeshed in the scam in a minor way.

Her judgement: “The statistics were being gained completely illegally, yes, completely, but I had no idea at the time they were being collected. If I had known that they were being collected illegally I would have immediately stopped the activity. You do the best you can and when you find out that something is being done improperly you just stop it.”

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1: A leader resolves ethical dilemmas

Another transport boss, Ann Gloag of Stagecoach Buses and Trains, maintains that no bribes are ever given and that transparency is maintained.

She said: “When you go to see presidents and ministers in developing countries they are always looking for bribes. They looked at us and said that we were very mean. We said that we will not give bribes; it is a company policy…absolutely no bribes, but we will do projects that will benefit the whole country. In Kenya, for example, we set up an orphanage.”

In Malawi, she built a Burns Unit at Queen Elizabeth General Hospital.

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2: A leader is open with her people

Dianne Thompson said:

“If there is one huge difference between men and women in leading …and there are many…it is that women tend to be more open!

Throughout my career I know that women talk more openly about what they can do and what they can’t do and the problems they have.”

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3: A leader brings out the best in people

“I would distinguish leadership from management. I was taught at IBM that management is learning how to look after resources.

Leadership is different. It involves inspiring people and causing them to do more than they think they can do. That to me is the greatest challenge and the greatest thrill of leading – making people far more successful than they think they can be.”

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4: A leader collaborates easily

Anne Wood, as a film producer, believes in a collaborative leadership style. Her leadership role is to search for new talent.

“I am on the lookout all the time. I try people out. We do something that is very particular and we are looking for skills that people sometimes do not know they have.”

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5: A leader shares the credit

Sharing credit for Dame Marjorie Scardino’s achievements comes naturally for her and is part of her leadership style. In her biggest acquisition she bought the publishers – Simon & Schuster for £4.6 billion in November 1998. She made the purchase with the help of Peter Jovanovich and immediately put him in charge of Pearson Education to include the new publisher and Pearson’s own publishing arm – Addison-Wesley and Longman. When she is in the full glare of the media announcing company results, she puts her arms around the other members of her top team to make it difficult for the photographers and camera men to exclude them from the frame, by focussing only on her.

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6: A leader shares the cash

Dame Marjorie Scardino is still the only woman CEO of a FTSE 100 company. She earned £1.29 million in salary last year, which gave her a ranking of number 25 among Britain’s top FTSE 100 CEOs – 99 men. She has extended share option schemes from 20 per cent when she became CEO five years ago to 96 per cent in 2001.

Patricia Vaz at BT says: “I watch every year when salary reviews take place to make sure that we are not allowing people to be disadvantaged because of where they come from and who they are…I strip out the females and the people of ethnic minorities to see if their performance rankings are in any way out of line with the males or the majority of the workforce.”

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7: A leader is concerned about her people

Dame Marjorie Scardino earned world-wide approval for an e-mail to each of Pearson’s 28,000 employees following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 on the World Trade Center where 65 Pearson employees worked on the 17 floor of the north tower.

The e-mail said:

Dear Everybody

I want to make sure you know that our priority is that you are safe and sound in body and mind. Be guided by what you and your families need right now. There is no meeting you have to go to and no plane you have to get on if you don’t feel comfortable doing it. For now look to yourselves and to your families, and to Pearson to help you any way we can.

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8: A leader is tenacious

Patricia Vaz said: “To achieve a leadership position in any organisation you need tenacity – you must keep going and keep trying and you have to be brave.”

“I met a scuba diver instructor in the West Indies who said that he would rather teach a woman than a man in scuba diving, because a man will swim up to death’s door (as a macho thing), saying “I can do this!”; whereas a woman will say: “can we avoid the danger?”

Ann Burdus said: “…if women take on non-executive directorships they will do it properly, which means that they will spend most of Sunday reading the papers for next week’s board meeting.”

Ann Gloag: “There was a lot of criticism of stagecoach and our aggressive behaviour. It was not aggressive at all. It was just that we were the first to do it and there is a price to pay for being first.”

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9: A leader is consultative

Running the Royal Marsden Hospital was a huge job for Phylllis Cunningham, but for 24 years at the top she kept an open policy. She made it clear to others that she would listen to anyone from trade union representatives to politicians.

She said: “I like to talk to people and get their views. But I’m very careful not to usurp the authority of my directors or managers. Part of my management style was to be always approachable.”

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10: A leader is conciliatory

Prue Leath was as multi-tasked as a top manager could be. She ran a catering business, a cookery school, and her own restaurant at the same time. TV drama would depict all three businesses to be high-pressured.

She says: “My management style was always conciliatory, non-confrontational. I wanted to encourage people to do their best and enjoy what they were doing. It’s the teacher in me.”

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11. A leader looks for opportunities and takes risksThe Scottish Business Insider magazine said of Ann Gloag, transport entrepreneur: “It’s clear from voters (more than 250 senior executives who voted her the top award) that Ann Gloag triumphed because her peers highly appreciate her quite single-minded exhibition of business flair, strategic clarity and downright opportunism…”

Ann Gloag’s father gave his entire bus driver’s pension to help her and her brother start Stagecoach. She recalled: “He invested every penny of it with our company – i think it was £12,000. We tried to give it back but he would not take it. Now of course he has had a great deal of pleasure for his investment. But at the time, think of the faith that he had in us to give us £12,000 – all he had.”

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12: A leader is dedicated to the wider community

Anita Roddick, Ann Gloag, Prue Leith, Ann Wood and Patsy Bloom are the most notable women who showed a social conscience in their dedication to the broader community. Their help of the young, the poor, the unemployed, the medically needy, the socially deprived, the handicapped, the marginated, the old, included sharing their wealth with them, dealing with their pressing needs, finding them work and creating other opportunities for them as employees, suppliers and consumers.

Anita Roddick summed it up when she said: “Open up a typical management book and you will find it hard to avoid words like leadership, team-building, company culture or customer service. However, you will be lucky to find words like community, social justice, human rights, dignity, love or spirituality – the emerging language of business.”