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By Yolanda Nobanda, COO and Co-founder of Yugrow
There isn’t a one-size-fits all approach to unlocking the potential of women in business. While gender parity is no longer falling on deaf ears, it is still not gaining the traction that it requires.
The role of equality cannot be taken for granted because now more than ever, businesses do need all hands-on deck—true diversity—where everyone can bring their whole selves and contribute their unique talents to solve these economic times. Our societies require an embrace of the Feminine Leadership Archetype to solve, with more empathy and inclusivity, the social issues faced across the globe. Unlocking and promoting female leaders is exactly what this moment in history and the economic climate requires to create more sustainable and inclusive growth.
The current activities within business to address the development of women are currently not achieving the results that are intended. We still see less than 8% of female CEOs in the JSE-listed companies, female leadership pipelines that do not translate into the promotion of women into strategic C-suite roles across different sectors, and less than 3% of VC funds globally being invested in female-owned businesses.
Research conducted by Yugrow sheds light on the barriers women experience when navigating their careers. According to the data gleaned from this research, 68% of female employees struggle to maintain a peak performance mindset; 80% of women do not bring their whole selves to work, given the expectation of political savviness; 65% of women report not having the confidence to take bold steps and move out of their comfort zones; and 76% of women reported having a negative or inner critic, beating themselves up for mistakes and taking longer to recover.
It is recognised that there are a myriad of support and development interventions that organisations implement for their female talent, with varying degrees of success and impact. Yugrow is challenging these approaches and leveraging technology to create scale and sustainable impact.
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Traditional approaches have tended to be one-size fits all, lacking the personalisation to meet the needs of where the participant is in her career growth journey. They are delivered in fixed format structures that don’t support learning in the individual’s work and life flow, given the multi-faceted lives that women live in reality. And finally, standardised learning journeys don’t identify or cater for the individual’s unique development opportunities.
These traditional approaches have led to learning and development for women becoming another chore to do, at times and platforms suitable for the collective, thus not being the truly “safe” spaces for substantive personal development to take place. They are not set up to drive sustainable behaviour change with short courses or interactions that provide what we call a motivational cliff.
The outcome is that the results are often intangible and anecdotal, and the true impact for women and the organisation is unclear. By using these tools, the World Economic Forum predicts a 268-year timeline to close the economic gender gap.
The current pace is not one that businesses can afford, and it cannot take multiple generations to get equal representation of ideas and diversity of thought to build disruptive and sustainable businesses.
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