Female Leadership

A Social Imperative and a Strong Business Case for More Women in Leadership Positions

A gender-diverse leadership team is not only socially responsible, but also makes a strong business case! Studies show that diverse (leadership) teams are more successful. In the competition for talents, you can leverage additional potential. By promoting gender diversity, you create the basis for future-oriented and competitive organizations.

Three Reasons for Female Recruiting

1. Increase Innovation & Performance

Increasing innovation and creativity: Women in leadership positions bring a wide range of perspectives and ideas to the table, which increases a company’s innovative strength. Their diverse experiences and ways of thinking lead to creative solutions and new approaches.

Promoting a rapid, profitable and risk-conscious decision-making culture: Female leaders tend to make decisions based on comprehensive analysis and better risk management. This leads to faster and more profitable decisions that also minimize risk.

2. Winning the War for Talent

Increasing attractiveness as an employer for female leaders and talents: Companies that promote women in leadership positions are particularly attractive to female talents. This leads to a larger pool of highly qualified applicants.

Profiling as an employer for women in leadership positions: By actively promoting women in leadership rolces, the company positions itself as a modern and inclusive employer. This increases market presence and attractiveness for a broader target group.

3. Secure Competitive Advantage

Fulfilling the ESG criteria of investors, suppliers, customers and partners: Compliance with environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria is becoming increasingly important for companies. Female leaders help to fulfill these criteria by implementing sustainable and responsible business strategies.

Improved market position through diversity: Companies with a high level of diversity in their leadership often enjoy a better reputation and trust among customers and business partners.

Female Leadership and Women in Leadership Positions

There is a lot of talk about female leadership when it comes to getting more women into leadership positions. Is there a type of leadership behaviour that can be described as female leadership?

There are social imprints that influence behaviour and organizational and social structures that influence behaviour. They make different decisions and lead differently. In the literature, this is referred to as the female leadership advantage.

1. Leadership Qualities:

Women have more of the favourable leadership qualities such as extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, sociability, kindness, and universalism

2. Leadership Styles:

Women choose relationship-oriented leadership styles (transformational and democratic-participatory leadership; shared leadership, servant leadership) and are less likely to abuse their position of authority.

3. Leadership Motivation:

Women have a stronger non-calculative and (probably) stronger pro-social leadership motivation.

4. Contribution:

Women in top management contribute to companies operating more transparently and taking on more social responsibility.

(Sabine Boerner: Female Leaders – Führen Frauen anders? Springer Gabler 2023)

More Women in Leadership Positions – Why is it so Difficult?

Promoting diversity has a direct impact on competitiveness and performance. This has been proven by numerous studies. Equal career opportunities and social justice are top priorities in many companies.

Why is it so difficult to implement, despite the well-known data and the large number of studies?

Holistic approaches are needed in which the proportion of women is sustainably increased through recruiting, personnel development and behavioral change measures, in close cooperation with leaders and HR departments. The scope requires professional diversity change management that focuses on employees.

7 Fundamentals to Increase Diversity

1. Ownership

Ownership is mandatory. It means being willing to be visible, setting clear goals and consistently pursuing them. It means investing, releasing resources and providing budget. It means a high level of commitment from the leadership team, which takes responsibility and demonstrates unity. Credibility comes from rigorous communication, consistent messages and consistent actions.

2. Diagnosis

This includes determining the level of diversity maturity in the organization. This in turn includes factual diversity and lived diversity, which is reflected in communication and behaviour, but can also be derived from structures (power positions) and processes (recruiting, personnel development).

3. Strategy Definition and Program

The diversity strategy includes a clear vision. What should be achieved? Only then can a unified understanding of diversity be established, and clear goals formulated. The scope and focus of the program are then derived from this.

4. Activating Change

The effectiveness, i.e. the extent to which the required behavioral changes can be achieved, is directly related to the activation of mindset drivers. These are empowerment, collaboration, communication and engagement. They must be considered in the design of all measures. Basically, these four activation parameters work in terms of psychological effects that induce, strengthen or prevent the desired behaviour.

5. Measure Planning

Measures are systematically aligned with strategy and goals and built up along the employee journey. Measures either promote engagement and implementation or counteract structural weaknesses or undesirable behavior. They are accompanied by communication and development measures and are designed to activate.

6. Accelerate

Measures that bring about short-term changes have an accelerating effect. Examples include quotas. They are effective in the short term, but also have a long-term psychological impact (trickle-down effect). Directly sanctioning undesirable behavior has a strong influence on the acceptance of the objectives and the implementation of the measures.

7. Monitoring

Effectiveness can be tracked through transparent monitoring. The degree of implementation can be tracked by building up reporting on facts, surveys and observations.

The Role of Society in Promoting Women in Leadership Positions

Wissenschaftlerin beim Experimentieren mit Chemikalien im Labor, die eine Lösung in einen Erlenmeyerkolben gibt.

Promoting women to management positions in companies is a necessary contribution to equal opportunities. Furthermore, there is an urgent need for a change in the social framework that makes it difficult to reconcile work and family life and promotes traditional role models. This also includes increasing the proportion of women in STEM degree programs and apprenticeships.

Contribution to the Realization of Equal Career Ppportunities and Social Equality

“Searchery is committed to a society in which everyone, regardless of gender, can contribute to economic success.”

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Philine Cremer

Partner, Düsseldorf

Nina Maywald

Partner, München

Henrike Simon

Associate Partner, München