There’s a dearth of women in the top leadership roles. While women make up half of the population and receive the majority of university degrees, only 30% of executives are of the female persuasion.
But, Barbara Annis is on a mission to change those statistics. As the CEO and founder of Gender Intelligence Group (GIG), Annis and her 50+ associates (who are scattered all over the globe), have conducted more than 8,000 corporate workshops. In addition, the thousands of executive coaching sessions and leadership diagnostic assessments performed by GIG have helped to reshape the conversation on gender unity in the workplace.
Annis is chair emeritus of the Women’s Leadership Board at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and was recently conferred the International Alliance for Women Lifetime Achievement Award.
She is also the author of several books, and her latest, Results at the Top: Using Gender Intelligence to Create Breakthrough Growth (co-authored with Richard Nesbitt), includes the research, data, and insight she’s gained from more than 27 years as a gender intelligence expert, and offers a different approach to solving the gender leadership problem.
EMPOWERING MEN
“You can’t solve the issue of advancement of women in leadership without involving men,” Annis tells HER Magazine. “There are few, if any, books written specifically for men to learn how they can become more gender intelligent, and what men can and should do to support and champion the advancement of women into leadership roles.”
Annis says her goal is to speak to men, empower them, and provide them with knowledge. “We talk a lot about barriers, but one of the key reasons for these barriers is that we haven’t engaged men.” While conversations routinely focus on what women need to do – or need to do differently, Annis says she and Nesbitt wrote the book to speak directly to men. “Rather than put the onus on women to fix women’s problems, we want to bring men into the equation.” She believes that the key is to make men more aware of the possibilities. “When men at the executive levels are engaged, they see the value,” Annis explains. “Not just the numbers game, but the value in the differences between men and women at the top.”
But, she’s not promising that gender equality problems will magically disappear. To read the rest of this article, access our October issue for FREE. Click on the image below.
