Passion and Purpose

Extract from the book: "Passion and Purpose -- stories from the Best and the brightest young business leaders," by John Coleman, Daniel Gulati and W . Oliver Sengovia, Harvard Business Review Press:

"Currently many organisations accommodated the specific circumstances of female employees. Usually, this involves flexible work arrangements, maternity leave and day care facilities. Unfortunately these are peripheral solutions to the lack of gender diversity in business, especially at the top. It's incumbent upon the next generation of female business leaders of forge their own rules based on the female centric value systems. Only after the rules of the business are rebuilt to incorporate such a value system will business be able to harness the talent of all their employees. These values involve:

• rejecting the false choice between family and professional success;
• Breaking down artifically forced gender roles;
• changing how women view themselves in the work place.

These are difficult issues to discuss because they question deeply held assumptions about the role of women, the nature of meritocracy and how we reward people in our organisation. Not only must organisation understand what young female professionals hold dear in order to truly capture the value they bring , but women themselves must also strive to better articulate and champion their values in the workplace. The next generation female leaders must break down the false choice between career and family. Like it or not, for biological and social reasons, women are positioned as primary caregivers in their families; and that position involves trading success at work for stability at home. The next generation of women and employees must work to erode this trade off. This starts with openness. Companies should become more proactive about making female managers available to female candidates to discuss openly how female mangers balance family and professional success with a firm. Female candidates must become more comfortable raising these questions explicitly. Companies can start to implement this openness by instructing HR professionals and managers who conduct interviews to describe the various degrees of flexibility available to the candidate and directly ask the candidate what is their need to achieve work-life balance. They should not be adversely impacted for prioritizing the personal and the professional. Rather women should be rewarded for successfully balancing both family and work (as incidently should men) . Women should feel free to bring their authentic selves to work -- whether that concept of self involves family or not -- and employees should create space for these discussions."

Source: The Mint 19th March 2012, p 13.