Thoughts on university leadership

Organizations that successfully navigate crises have leaders who provide direction and inspire action. Those that survive and flourish after a crisis have leaders who also create an environment for innovation.

An organization’s capacity to lead through and beyond a crisis can be nurtured and enhanced. Increasing gender diversity in the organizations’ leadership team can help. Diversity gives a greater variety of leadership styles. And that variety, especially in a crisis, will contribute to survival.

When members of underrepresented groups start their careers, they see themselves as outsiders and therefore need role models who still look like outsiders. Early career women do need female role models, but it’s more nuanced than that. They need female role models they can identify with.

What can you do to provide your young colleagues with mentors who look like them?

In Norway, at least 40% of the Board of Directors of any publicly traded company must be women. At least 40% must also be men. However, a new Norwegian study finds only 8% are in central decision making positions.

This is not just a social justice problem, it’s a social economics problem. As Burson Marsteller’s Marius Parmann rightly notes, it is reasonable to assume that talent is equally distributed across the groups of men and women. When 90% of the positions are filled from only 50% of the pool, Parmann reminds us, we get an “incorrect use of resources” and inevitably lose value.

The Norwegian report is important. It tells us where we’re at. It motivates us to continue asking whether there are good reasons to believe gender balance improves organizational performance. If we conclude that it does, then our job is to develop new measures that can remedy the current imbalance.

That is going to require a very deliberate effort. How shall we start?

Increasing gender balance in organizations is about improving the quality of the workplace for everyone. Improving the quality of the workplace feeds institutional goals across the board. Making the value of diversity in a workforce visible must become an integral part of leadership development programs. These 6 steps helped the University of Tromsø increase diversity 50% in four years.