Statistics prove that women are a vital part of the American workforce. As much as 26 percent of corporate growth from the 1970s to 2017 is due to women entering the labor market. Women comprise more than half of the overall workforce. Yet, female leaders account for just 26 percent of vice presidents, 14 percent of executive committees and 3 percent of CEOs in businesses. Discover three reasons why women make great leaders.
1. Learning and Development
Generally, women feel the need to continually improve themselves and develop skills more than men as they get older. By age 25, 70 percent of both men and women want leadership development opportunities. By age 60, those numbers change drastically. Nearly 50 percent of women sought leadership development opportunities versus 40 percent of men by the time they got close to retirement age. Female leaders are eager to learn, no matter what age they are.
2. Highly Qualified
Female leaders have plenty of skills and qualifications to bring to higher-level positions in business settings. An analysis of data compiled from more than 60,000 leaders in a database owned by Zenger/Folkman reveals women outperformed their male counterparts in 12 of 16 competency metrics measured by the business leadership firm.
Managers rated female leaders higher than male leaders by nearly five percentile points in the same data analysis. By comparison, the percentiles of ratings compiled from peers and direct reports were between two and three percentile points. Managers recognized the leadership abilities of women in a business setting more so than peers, which means supervisors seem ready to promote women when needed.
Considering 40 percent of senior executives leave their jobs with 18 months of an initial hire, there is no consistency at the top. Perhaps hiring female leaders can alleviate this problem.
3. Organizational Benefits
Offices that have an even mix of men and women increase their revenues by 41 percent versus all-male or all-female workplaces. The reason is that social diversity leads to greater collective knowledge within an organization. The balance of different thought processes and experiences leads to better productivity and effectiveness.
Further, women tend to listen to all sides of an issue before jumping to a conclusion or taking action. This generally leads to better decision making that provides better outcomes for the employer. Along with better listening skills comes clearer communication of strategies, goals and expectations of employees. Women may multitask better than men since they usually learn to balance a professional and personal life when it comes to raising children and working a full-time job.
Female leaders have tons to offer their employers, including longevity, well-thought-out decisions, sound business strategies and mentoring. Companies that foster the natural leadership abilities of women should take care of the people who help increase their bottom lines, so more firms should reward women with senior-level positions.
Photo courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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