Last week saw the Civil Service Live conference take place at Olympia conference centre in London. Three days of talks, workshops and supplier exhibitions all aimed at senior civil servants.

I ran a session on Women in Leadership in the main theatre which turned out to be an inadequately parcelled off area at the rear of the main exhibition hall; noise interrupted us from both the  well-behaved Civil Service Live conference at the front as well as the much more boisterous Imbibe conference at the rear. All in all, a great opportunity to practice voice projection and bring together a panel of senior women to discuss career progression in the civil service.

The British civil service is in many respects ahead of the private sector when it comes to making gender diversity a reality. It started setting objectives in 2003 which were renewed in 2008 and then followed up with a target to have 39 percent of senior civil service roles held by women by 2013. Current statistics show that the 30 percent barrier has already been breached and almost a third of the most senior roles in the civil service are held by women.

While the robust processes and structures that are in place have helped to significantly increase the representation of women in senior civil service roles, subtler barriers such as stereotypes, gender role expectations and the wider organisational culture are as much of a problem as in many private sector organisations. A number of senior female civil servants went on record recently to state that while practical changes have certainly helped to create a more diverse workforce, there still is a long way to go and that a difficult change in mindset is required in order to achieve true equality (see comments by Shioban Benita, 12^th Feb 2012 in Civil Service World; and Ursula Brennan, 2^nd Dec 2011, The Guardian).

And that’s what we focused the panel discussion on: processes versus culture. I had the great fortune to have with me a fabulous panel of both private and public sector female leaders:

• Andi Keeling, Director of Women’s Markets at RBS
• Sue Owen, Director General for Strategy at the Department for Work and Pensions
• Julia Bond, Non-executive Director for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
• Gillian Crooks, Deputy Director for Change at Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs

The panel shared how small changes to processes can make a big difference. For example, including a junior member on a promotion or selection panel ensures that transparency and openness is maintained and that no senior-level backroom deals take place on who is promoted or recruited into senior roles. The panellists encouraged the audience to take advantage of job sharing and mentoring schemes that exist across the civil service and reference was made to a speed-mentoring event that was to take place at the last day of the conference; a concept I hadn’t heard about but a great idea to encourage a good fit between mentors and mentees.

The role of mentors and mentoring developed as one of the main themes during our conversation and Madeleine Albright’s saying that “There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women" was mentioned. At least one of the panellists was asked by two women to be their mentor. This was great news and especially exciting for me as I’m currently working on a research report which looks into the issue of mentoring for women – due out towards the end of the year.

The Q&A time revealed, however, that despite the much more robust processes in place for encouraging gender diversity, the everyday experience of women in the civil service is still very similar to those in the private sector. The audience asked questions of the panel that I regularly hear at events in the private sector:

• I work three-days a week and have been implicitly told that my career is now on hold. What can I do to increase my visibility?
• How do you manage to create work-life balance? I struggle with that.
• I have a supervisor who doesn’t support my career advancement. What do you suggest I do?

The panellists’ advice emphasised the importance of repeatedly looking for opportunities, taking risks, building a breadth of experiences, aiming high and moving on if your supervisor doesn’t support your career.

Overall the session was in turns revealing, encouraging and disappointing. While there remains much to be done in a drive towards cultural equality, the Civil Service does provide some inspirations that all kinds of organisations could learn from.

Recent Catalyst and Opportunity Now Awards, for diversity and inclusion, have highlighted the fact that organizations  who have managed to increase the senior management diversity have received strong CEO support and senior management commitment. But it’s not only about officially stating the organization’s support for inclusive leadership in front of a rolling camera. It’s also about making sure that informal micro-messages from senior and middle management are just as supportive.

In her keynote speech at the BPS Conference about Diversity in the Workplace (London, September 2011), Stella Nkomo said that these micro-messages are not to be underestimated. She talked about the importance of these informal messages in the context of a manager directly saying to a woman, or a black man – “you are valued in this organisation, we want you here”.

Lord Davies next progress report is not expected until March/April of next year. With growing evidence that more gender diversity at the top is linked to increased organizational performance, will the bleak economic outlook spur CEOs and chairmen into action or will it side-line gender diversity and inclusive leadership as a ‘nice to have’ rather than an integral part of weathering the storm? What micro-messages are currently being exchanged in senior management meetings when diversity and inclusion are discussed, I wonder?

In it’s 13^th year, the Fortune 500 Most Powerful Women’s Summit took place this week in Laguna Niguel, California. A Who is Who of America’s top business women, the summit brings together an impressive list of both senior Fortune 500 women as well as promising entrepreneurs. With this year’s title THE START OF SOMETHING BIG, the event featured four different progamme streams: leadership, global business, innovation & growth, and social good. In addition to the face-to-face conference in California,  many sessions were streamed out live to over 10,000 virtual attendees.

The messages to the next generation of aspiring women leaders were clear – many not new but infused with additional validity coming from these impressive female captains of industry. Here are a few examples:

·         Ginni Rometty SVP at IBM: Growth and comfort don't co-exist. You learn the most when you take risks.

·         Gloria Steinem, Women's Action Alliance: I would have told my younger self not to be so nice; women are too nice!

·         Sheryl Sandberg, COO Facebook advises that women need to keep the foot on the career gas pedal; keep looking for opportunities.

·         Ellen Kullman, Chair and CEO of DuPont commented on the benefits of others holding up a mirror and providing feedback; important to keep growing.

·         Meg Whitman, Chair and CEO of HP: We are all cut out for almost everything we want to do.

·         Sister CEOs, Denise Morrison, CEO Campbell Soup, and Maggie Wilderotter, CEO of Frontier Communications advise: be strategic about your career

Organisational politics brings with it connotations of intrigue, manoeuvring and favouritism. It is rarely associated with positive attributes and it is often avoided by women. Nevertheless, many reluctantly recognise that those who use political behaviour in a skilled manner seem to advance faster in organisations – they always seem to be aligned to the right people, have important insider knowledge and are in favour with those in power. One way to help women overcome their reluctance for politicking in the workplace is to use different terminology. Phrases such as sharing success and building effective relationships can convey a different impression, but retain the same end result.

To become a skilled operator in an organisation’s political arena, try the following:

·         Share personal success stories. This is an integral part of career success. It’s not about bragging, it’s about helping your very busy boss understand what you have delivered. Without you sharing, he or she won’t always know.

·         Find yourself a mentor, an effective mentor. Psychosocial support is a great thing to have but we know that the really effective mentors share information about unwritten organisational rules and provide access to powerful networks. Be selective in your choice of mentor and ask for the information you are currently not getting.

·         Network, network, network. Networking really is as important as everyone always makes it out to be. Find ways of building one-to-one relationships with people who are important to your career and keep them up-to-date on your progress.

·         If you find networking with men difficult, go prepared. What is the latest business deal or major sporting event that has taken place? Remember that men like to comment on things such as sports and business rather than sharing personal information early on in a conversation.

·         Change the terminology. Think about sharing successes and building winning relationships rather than self-promotion and ingratiation. Organisational politics become more palatable when you think of it in these terms.

Extract from How Women Can Succeed at Office Politics, published July 2011. For full article, please go to http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/topic/leadership/office-politics-how-women-can-succeed/161773

Including women at all levels of organisational life makes sense: women bring different skills and a fresh perspective to decision-making, foster innovation and are good for an organisation’s image. Furthermore, organisations with the most gender-diverse management and board teams have better financial results (e.g. Catalyst, The Bottom Line, 2007).

In 2003, Norway was the first country to enact a quota law that stipulates that 40% of board positions in all publicly listed and state owned companies have to be held by women. Despite the initial outcry, there now seems to be agreement about the effectiveness of the law to increase the number of women on boards. As a result, other countries such as Spain, France, Iceland and Canada are following Norway’s example and introducing quotas for women on boards.

After this success, all eyes have turned to executive teams. However, statistics from Norway are still as disappointing as they are elsewhere. Only about 6% of senior management roles in private companies are held by women. These results emphasise the importance of strengthening current efforts to increase women’s representation at executive level. Skills training, networking opportunities and mentoring schemes are often mentioned as effective interventions. Not surprisingly, much the same applies to increasing women’s representation senior executive level. The problem is not a lack of knowing what works but rather an unwillingness to make gender diversity an organisational priority (McKinsey - Women Matter, 2009). Policies and initiatives to redress the gender imbalance at senior levels require active CEO sponsorship, close monitoring for effectiveness and anchoring in performance metrics.

Taken from Can Quotas Work?, co-written with Elin Hurvenes, Chair of the Professional Boards Forum, Norway, and published in The HRDirector, December 2010, Issue 74.