Gender Balanced Leadership: An Executive Guide

What does it take to change the representation of women in leadership? Many executives are keen to achieve gender balance, but knowing what to do, when, and bringing others on board, is not always easy. Worse, it's hard to find guidance that is based on good evidence. The objectives of Gender Balanced Leadership: An Executive Guide are firstly to share the many evidence-based insights gleaned from extensive research and secondly to share the tactics successfully used to change gender representation in leading organisations. The book has chapters on leadership, culture, work practices, talent and performance management. Each chapter summarises the evidence about gender balance at work. What are best practice organisations doing, and what results have they achieved? Each chapter also provides a guide on how to make progress towards best practice. Each section within each chapter turns the evidence and experience into a straightforward "To do" checklist of workable actions. Having assessed their organisation's progress and reviewed best practice, executives can then select three to four key actions to inspire and focus their change efforts. The book's final chapter focuses on personal change. The evidence is clear that unconscious bias is an important factor in the perpetuation of gender imbalance. The chapter provides a process for raising personal awareness of unconscious bias and allowing conscious evaluation. Practical tools are provided to help minimise the impact of bias on decision making.