The other half of the equation
Why serious investment in female talent progression has produced less than it should – and what’s missing.
← HomeWhat’s missing
Most large organisations have spent a decade investing in female talent: development programmes, mentoring, networks, accreditation schemes, awareness training. That work was right, and much of it has made a difference. But it was aimed almost entirely at one half: the individual.
The other half is the judgement she meets. Who gets heard in meetings. Who is handed the stretch project. Who is seen as ready, by whom, against what. Very little has ever been aimed there.
This is where we work – on the other half of the equation – the everyday leadership behaviours that decide whether talent is heard, stretched and promoted.
Developing, preparing and supporting women:
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Leadership behaviour – not one decision but hundreds of small ones:
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Who progresses and who stays – talent realised, not just developed:
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Work aimed at the individual has to be repeated with every cohort. Recalibrating the behaviour and judgement of the leaders making these decisions happens once and applies to every decision they make afterwards – not once a year at promotion but in every meeting, every allocation of significant work, every read of a contribution.
We start with gender, because that is where the evidence and the published targets are. Within weeks, participants report noticing the same dynamic elsewhere – the quiet expert, the person who came up through operations, the colleague whose first language isn’t English.
We have changed how we run and participate in meetings – it’s not limited to gender. It has rippled into everything we do.
I had never thought about this or noticed it, but now I am seeing it everywhere.
Why it persists
Many organisations have run unconscious bias training and seen it change little. That result is real, and it isn’t surprising.
Judgements about authority and promotion-readiness are made against a stored reference point – a sense of what authority should look and sound like, built from a working life of examples. We call it the . For most of the period in which that reference point formed, the examples were overwhelmingly male: in fact they still are – 84% of FTSE 350 executive directors are men, and 92% of FTSE 100 CEOs.
FTSE Women Leaders Review; Russell Reynolds Associates, Global CEO Turnover Report
Because the authority template runs beneath conscious thought, information doesn’t reach it.
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Knowing isn’t enough
Every visitor to a country that drives on the other side of the road knows the traffic comes from the opposite direction. Awareness of that doesn’t stop us looking the wrong way at the kerb. The reflex is faster than the knowledge and awareness.
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Feedback is critical
At a kerb, you find out immediately – a near miss is unmistakable, and the reflex corrects within days. In business, there’s no near miss. When someone’s contribution is underweighted, or they are judged not quite ready, nothing tells you. The meeting proceeds. The decision looks sound.
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What changes the reflex
Correcting the reflex takes deliberate recalibration: evidence from your own organisation, the moment surfaced as it happens, and enough repetition for the new response to become automatic.
This is the work we do
Talk it through
Start with an initial conversation – about where your organisation is, what you’ve tried and where we could help. There’s no commitment.
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