Gender Balance& Win

How Leaders Overcome the REAL Obstacles

SUE JEFFERSON

THE CHALLENGE FOR MEN AND WOMEN IN BUSINESS TODAY

Today’s world of business has come a long way though it is still lagging behind in gender bias.

As a woman how do you navigate this issue and ensure success in your workplace, become an exceptional leader and love both your work and your home life?

As a leader, male or female, how do you enable your organisation to become naturally inclusive, overcoming the unconscious bias that commonly exists?

Many successful companies have adopted programs to recognize talented women, create an inclusive culture and are designed to nurture their success driven employees. This is a wise move for companies looking to make an impact as these high achieving individuals can have an enormous positive effect on business results.

The reasons why diversity& gender balance brings better business performance are obvious – they bring breadth of thinking to every leadership team. However, biases and barriers can still exist even in the most innovative and progressive companies, particularly if they are quite male orientated. These barriers manifest either as unconscious bias; emotional reasons that are not recognised as such, or with a limited few, still conscious bias that are now simply hidden under the auspices of legislation, but don’t let that be an excuse for what’s holding you back.

This chapter, compiled from listening to and reading the very many different viewpoints of business leaders, head hunters, men and women, as well as my own experiences as a Boardroom executive who has delivered unprecedented growth, seeks to offer those leaders of companies with an unconscious bias together with their HR Directors, a way to recognise barriers in their organisation, practical solutions to overcome them and how to get started in creating and benefiting their business with gender balance in their workplace.

A PRACTICAL SOLUTION FOR LEADERS AND INDIVIDUALS

Using my 30 years work experience, where I became one of the first female Director/VPs in a global food manufacturer, leading multi-discipline teams and transforming business outcomes, all while maintaining a marriage of 24 years and raising a family, I have created a toolkit called the C.A.R.B.O.N. Way to Transform to Sparkling Success ©. I now work with visionary organisations to enable their high potential women to develop simple to apply strategies& support leaders to constructively address these barriers and provide practical applications to enable mutual success and career/life balance.

First of all, what is this toolkit that I talk about? Known as the C.A.R.B.O.N. Way to Transform to Sparkling Success© with six key pieces, addressing the most common barriers holding back women and organisations.

Cutting Through To Be Heard: If you are not heard by your colleagues and superiors in the workplace it will be difficult to achieve any level of success. Bef