I work for a company with over 23,000 employees and on a team of 14 that includes people representing multiple cultures and countries.   That sounds like it defines the word diversity in just one sentence.  The only thing that was left out from the description is that of the 14, only one of the team members is female.  She is from Costa Rica, but still the only member of our team to represent women.  In my regional office, there are 2 females in senior management positions for the region, but as one moves up to our corporate office in Europe, there are no females in a senior management role.  A startling statistic (2016) shows that “women occupy just 22% of senior roles in G7 countries while 39% of companies have no women in senior roles” which falls right in line with what I see across the board in our own company.

Diversity is broken up into two levels.  On the top there is gender, age, and skin which are things we can see in one another. On a deeper level, there are behaviors and beliefs of an individual and one’s culture that can affect how an individual’s value system is based (Penn State, 2016). A woman in the workforce must compete within a system that has preconceptions and historical norms that do not place them in leadership roles.  While western women are given more opportunities to take on higher roles, the same woman in Saudi Arabia has limits to how they can even interact with men (2016).  This creates a different mindset among women based on location that makes it even more difficult to be more inclusive as a company.  If the same company has 2 women in a department and they are from different cultures and beliefs, it is difficult to know how to interact with both in a consistent manner.  On could say this is also true given the same example with 2 men, but the playing field here is more even.  There are even more differences between men and women in the workforce that make it more difficult for a woman to succeed.

One of the senior women in our regional office has been in charge of the IT department for the past 7 years.  She is a kind communicator and an excellent leader.  Everyone know that she will stand up for them and get the job done.  It is important to describe her to put everything into perspective.  She is married with no children and has 2 dogs which she cares for like a child.  She works long hours, will travel on short notice and can stand in with any group of men and hold her own, not only in conversation but in knowledge.  She is atypical and some of this explains how she has climbed to senior management.  That being said, I have been on a site in a board room with other men while she is on the phone and they still give looks and make comments that would never be made in person.  This illustrates that even though she is excellent at her job, other senior executives still think of her in a lessor way. I have had someone that reports to her mention that although she is a good communicator, she lacks the knowledge to make the right decisions. One stereotype is “Women lack quantitative skills, and therefore cannot hold technical positions or understand the numbers required in a profit-and-loss environment. Women possess “soft” skills such as communication and team building” (Moran, 2015 p.148). In my opinion, the person that made the comments is the one that does not have the right knowledge to make good decisions, but he does say the right things which senior management wants to here and he keeps his position safe, while she pulls the harder tasks when things need to get done.

Moving forward, how can we have more diversity to include women in more areas of our organization and at the same time have inclusion from the expanded group? In my team, travel is a necessity which limits many people with families from wanting to join due to the required trips.  This can be addressed with keeping people in places for less time or eliminating the travel to use technology in its place.  Conference calls can be virtual with video and this could open up opportunity to new groups to come and bring the same skill set to the game.  Women in Senior roles through “diversity can bring many organizational benefits, including greater customer satisfaction, better market position, successful decision-making, an enhanced ability to reach strategic goals, improved organizational outcomes, and a stronger bottom line” (Riordan, 2014).

Recently we have had a change in the region that puts us under the European lead leadership structure.  In this new world the same woman that was in charge or the regional IT will now take over in a senior global role.  As she starts out this new path, she has to fight a similar battle with a whole new group of people and re-prove her knowledge again in order to gain acceptance to a male dominated group.  She does have the ear of our CIO who is also American which may work in our favor to overcome the mindset of the conservative male run company and may make it to CIO herself one day.  I have learned from working with women that were would all benefit from their wisdom and experience and look forward to having more on my team

References:

Women in senior positions in decline. (2016, March 8). Retrieved December 05, 2017, from http://economia.icaew.com/news/march-2016/uk-falling-behind-on-diversity

Penn State University World Campus. (2016). Lesson 3: Diversity. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1802572/modules/items/21179060

Nine things women can’t do in Saudi Arabia. (2016, July 28). Retrieved December 05, 2017, from http://www.theweek.co.uk/60339/nine-things-women-cant-do-in-saudi-arabia

Moran, Robert T.; Abramson, Neil Remington; Moran, Sarah V.(2015). Managing Cultural Differences. Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition

Riordan, C. (2014, June 01). Diversity Is Useless Without Inclusivity. Retrieved September 10, 2016, from https://hbr.org/2014/06/diversity-is-useless-without-inclusivity

I’ve wanted to own my own business for as long as I can remember. However, I could never decide exactly what type of business I’d like the most. When my boyfriend, José, and I started dating, he shared with me right away that he had always dreamed of opening a bodega or some sort of restaurant. Immediately, I felt like his ideas were what I was waiting for. I had toyed with the idea of a restaurant for several years, but I heard some scary statistics about how most restaurants fail in the first five years, so I was scared to make that kind of commitment without some sort of plan. With José’s experience of running his mother’s bodega in his home country, the Dominican Republic, as a teenager, and our combined ideas for how we’d run a business together, we have the passion and commitment needed to get a successful business off the ground.

But with José and I originating from different countries, how would our cultural differences affect our leadership in this business? José has experience running a bodega, while I have the knowledge gained from my (soon-to-be) dual degrees in Business and Psychology. Our ideas for the business include serving hot foods daily within the bodega, while also providing customers with Hispanic foods and products that they may not be able to find in other stores. While I have many ideas and suggestions for how to run this business, we will need to rely heavily on José’s expertise as a Hispanic person to understand what types of products will be popular in our shop while still adding in some of my American influence. Many of our customers will be from Hispanic countries or families and will be looking for hard-to-find products. Those coming in for our hot foods may be employees looking for a good quality yet fast meal to grab on their lunch breaks and could be any ethnicity. In this type of business, we will need to cater to customers from many different cultural backgrounds.

Northouse (2016) reported findings from Adler and Bartholomew (1992) who found that the increase of globalization in recent years has led to a need for leaders to develop several cross-cultural competencies. These competencies will be important for José and me to keep in mind as we develop our business. First, we will need to understand the difference in business and cultural environments (Adler & Bartholomew, 1992, as cited in Northouse, 2016) between Americans and Dominicans and make sure that we can work well with our vendors and our customers. Next, we will have to focus on the tastes and trends of the cultures of our customers (Adler & Bartholomew, 1992, as cited in Northouse, 2016) in order to understand them and cater to their needs. We will also need to be able to work with people from other cultures (Adler & Bartholomew, 1992, as cited in Northouse, 2016), as it may be important to hire bilingual employees who can communicate with Spanish-speaking customers or hire foreign vendors to provide authentic products. Fourth, while we may not need to go live in another culture, we will certainly need to be able to communicate with other cultures (Adler & Bartholomew, 1992, as cited in Northouse, 2016), based on our desire to start a business that provides foreign products in a local market. Finally, we will need to be able to relate to our customers from a position of equality instead of superiority (Adler & Bartholomew, 1992, as cited in Northouse, 2016) if we want to please our customers and keep them coming back to our store. Because our business will focus on the Hispanic culture but will serve people from any culture on the planet, we will need to have a multicultural approach to business (Northouse, 2016).

It is my belief that by keeping these competencies in mind and striving to provide the best experience and products to our customers, we will be able to have a successful business. While working with different cultures may not be second nature, it doesn’t have to be a source of stress, and can actually be a fun and exciting challenge.

Reference

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

More than 50 years have passed since the Civil Rights Act was enacted, and we are still dealing with discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or ethnicities. Although many executives around the world and pundits have reiterated the importance of diversity and inclusion over and over, many women are still hitting the glass ceiling, members of minority groups are treated differently due to their race, religions, sexual orientation, or national origins. On a positive side, we know there is a growing number of women in leadership positions (Northouse, 2016) in both business and politics. Unfortunately, many still express concerns that the glass ceiling has not broken yet which creates gender egalitarian working environments. Boris Grosyberg and Katherine Connolly (2013) interviewed 24 CEO’s from around the world on diversity, and the CEOs shared their candid views on institutional barriers for women in the workplace.

Based on years of observation, the CEOs described that women are implicitly bullied by their male co-workers. The men created social cliques as their offending mechanism to use against women in the workplace. Women are often not included in social networks and ignored while men hang out with each other and seek out the company of each other instead of including women in the cliques. Groysberg and Connolly (2013) perceived such treatments as “….unintended, unconscious and embedded in a company’s culture.”. Due to the men’s unconscious bias against women, women are often underappreciated despite of their contributions even if the male executive were aware of fostering inclusive cultures (Connolly & Groysberg, 2013).

The CEOs also mentioned that unexamined assumptions constrained women in their progress. As Northouse (2016) mentioned, gender biases stemmed from stereotypes widens the leadership gap between men and women. Men often made assumptions that went against women’s chances for promotion based on their stereotyped expectations of women. For example, if a job requires someone to travel a lot, women are highly likely to be excluded in consideration for the job as men expect women to assume mother/wife roles outside work, and they would be less inclined to relocate only because they are thought to anchor to a location where their spouses work.

Finally, some CEOs mentioned organizations’ insufficient support for women who were returning to the workplace after taking some time off due to child bearing and child rearing (Connolly & Groysberg, 2013). Women tended to have difficulty maintaining a work-life balance due to a lack of flexible work hours or support from their male leaders. The men expected women to do it all based on their gender stereotyped expectations as if women were solely responsible for child rearing or child care. As Northouse (2106) mentioned that gender stereotypes are easily activated and often influence leaders to make biased judgments.

Although many organizations are looking to adopting flexible work hours which can put women at great advantage as they have opportunities to maintain a balanced work-life as well as improve their career development, the barriers are not likely to be demolished as long as unconscious biases are practiced in the organizations. Despite of how competent and effective leadership styles women have, women in the workplace are still on their arduous journey to fight for recognition and reconstructing the social norm.

References

Connolly, B. G., & Groysberg, B. G. (2013, September). Great Leaders Who Make the Mix Work. Retrieved June 05, 2017, from https://hbr.org/2013/09/great-leaders-who-make-the-mix-work

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: theory and practice. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.

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One of the most interesting topics in the military to me is the gender gap between men and women.  I am sure over the past few years you have read or seen online or in a newspaper about women in the military.  One of the biggest topics in 2014 was women were going to be held to the same physical standards as men in the Marine Corps.  Surprisingly…when they took this approach more than half of the female Marine Corps members failed the physical fitness test and so they delayed this standard.  In the Air Force men and women have different standards in the physical fitness test and it creates a small gender equality gap, not just in the Air Force but across all branches.  Since this is a leadership blog I am not going to focus on physical standards, however physical standards can have a small impact on the way some people see women leaders.

The gender gap in leadership is a phenomenon where women are seen in a lower-level and to have lower-leadership positions (Northouse, 2016).  In my 10 years in the Air Force I have had one woman leader and that is currently my Wing Commander, General Jeannine Leavitt the first female fighter pilot in the Air Force.  I honestly don’t think much of it, she is my boss’s boss and we do what she says to complete the mission which is no different than anyone else holding that position.  The leadership labyrinth in Northouse focuses on three categories of human capital, gender differences, and prejudice which contribute to this gender gap.

Northouse talks about human capital differences and that women have less capital in education, training, and work experiences (Northouse, 2016).  In the Air Force, from an officer’s perspective, I don’t see that way.  Every officer, woman or man, must earn at least a bachelor degree to be commissioned and if selected to be an officer.  Being selected as an aviator I had to go through a tough 12 month academic and flying course in which peers of mine who were women.  We were all students and held to the same academic and flying standards and the first time I saw this perception of a gender gap was in this training.

Didn’t matter if you were a woman or a man, some of us struggled some of us did well, a girl in my class was one of the strongest students.  She worked hard and I remember admiring her for that but some of my male class mates being prejudice that she was doing well and ranked higher than them only because she was a woman.  It never bothered me, just drove me to strive to do better because I wanted to be the best in my class no matter who was ranked higher than me.

Prejudice in the gender gap of leadership is that stereotype bias that women take care and men take charge especially in group settings (Northouse, 2016).  One of the stereotypes in the B-52 community is that women can’t handle the jet the way a man can which is not true at all.  The B-52 is a monstrosity and hard to handle flying no matter who are.  Another stereotype is women not being able to handle emergencies in the jet, but I’ve seen a woman handle a three engine fire better the her male counterpart in the other pilot seat.  During this emergency she took charge because our pilot froze up and struggled to remember what to do during an emergency.  At the end of the day we all landed safe because of her and her ability to bring the crew together to work as a team during the emergency.

The third thing Northouse talks about is gender differences in the gender gap and one of the arguments is that women are just different than men (Northouse, 2016).  Well yes we are different in obvious ways just as everyone’s leadership style is different.  Researchers have argued that gender has no relationship to leadership style and effectiveness (Northouse, 2016).  Peers of mine who are women have been in small leadership roles in a squadron such as flight commander of a shop and the each had their own way of leading just like I have my own way of leading.  I have seen both men and women do well and fail in a leadership position so the gender difference is a moot point.  Women and Men build their leadership style through life through experiences, ways they were raised, training, and academics.

While a gender gap exists in the Air Force and military women and men can both be leaders.  It is up to individuals and groups to not be bias or prejudice in anyone’s leadership style.  We work as teams to get accomplish the mission no matter who is at the controls.

References:

Northouse, P.G. (2016).  Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications