Corporate executives interested in promoting women into leadership positions often struggle to find women internally with the right skills when needed, leadership speaker and coach Dima Ghawi says in a new guest column.
“Their limited succession planning becomes a missed opportunity for these companies,” Ghawi writes in her column from the current issue of Business Report. “Advancing women in leadership is smart business. Consistent research shows that a more equal number of women leaders in an organization greatly benefits the bottom line.”
Ghawi points to a recent Catalyst study that finds Fortune 500 companies with three or more women on their board outperform their competitors with 53% more return on equities, 42% more return on sales and 66% more return on invested capital.
“Research also shows that having women as part of the leadership team is more likely to improve employee engagement, productivity, innovation and organizational sustainability,” she writes. “Despite the value that women bring to businesses, most companies are still missing out on these opportunities. For example, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology, women executives account for only 6% of chief executives at the top 100 tech companies.”
For any executive or business owner wanting to benefit from creating gender parity in their leadership team, Ghawi offers these three tips: Create a 10-year leadership talent pipeline; develop programs to attract and retain women leaders; and participate in discussions focused on women in leadership.
“Being deliberate in driving change and promoting gender parity among the leadership team results in multiple wins for the company’s bottom line, the women leaders, our economy and our society,” Ghawi writes. “And there’s also another crucial win: The win for the next generation of women who will now have female leaders to look up to as role models.”
Read the full column. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.
