Women’s Leadership Development

At many organizations, while half or more of frontline workers are women, there are fewer women moving up the ranks, with very few women executives at the top. In fact, women outnumber men at almost every educational level, yet hold just 24% of senior management roles and make up only 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs. Many companies struggle to tap the power of women’s leadership and have fewer women in the leadership pipeline because women in the workplace often face a disproportionate share of barriers to advancement, including double standards, the second shift, and the infamous glass ceiling.

Leadership development initiatives can help women break the glass ceiling. By offering women leadership training opportunities, providing greater flexibility and work-life balance, ensuring women leaders receive constructive feedback, and continuing to evolve organizational policies and practices, companies can keep and advance talented women in leadership roles. In addition, organizations should keep in mind that mentoring and sponsoring at work are important — particularly for women.

Recently, the pandemic has undone much of the progress women have made in the workforce in the past several decades. In fact, women are now leaving their careers at much higher rates than their male counterparts. Plus, they face additional barriers to advancement. This is why leadership training is important for women — now more than ever. Organizations must make intentional efforts to invest in the retention and support of their talented women leaders. Additionally, leadership development training helps women navigate the unique challenges they face, and advance and promote other high-potential women. 

According to our research on women in the workplace, having more women in leadership roles actually makes an organization a better place to work, for people of all genders. We found that having higher numbers of women leaders predicted several positive organizational outcomes, including less burnout, higher job satisfaction levels, and greater commitment to the organization — for both women and men. Plus, extensive cross-industry research has found that having women in leadership helps to drive bottom-line financial performance.

For the most part, the same things that men do. In our study of nearly 750 women and men leaders, we found that there were no statistical gender differences when it comes to how interested men and women are in raises, promotions, and leadership development opportunities, with 81% of women reporting that they were interested to extremely interested in leadership development training.