As Borderless prepares to present at the Women in Leadership Forum on 5 October during the CPhI Congress in Barcelona, it’s timely to ask whether organisations are really committed to growing female talent. In a thought-provoking article, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox asks if it’s time to forget Cinderella and instead question whether the prince (that is, the business) is up to the dance.
Instead of companies spending money on recruiting women they cannot retain, Wittenberg-Cox argues they should be creating a level playing field for all. That might mean changing the way talent is identified, and when.
As Wittenberg-Cox notes, companies normally identify their high-potential future talent when workers are in their early 30s – just the time many women choose to have children. Is it another example of the many ‘systemic blindspots’ that are holding women back?
Read: Forget Cinderella, Find Fred Astaire
Share your thoughts with us via Twitter @borderlessexec #WomeninLeadership
There’s been a lot of buzz about a 4-day workweek. But it will be the ‘4 + 1’ workweek that ultimately wins out: 4 days of “work” and 1 day of “learning.” Several forces are converging in a way that point toward the inevitability of this workplace future.
How can leaders help their teams combat change exhaustion — or step out of its clutches? Too often, organizations simply encourage their employees to be resilient, placing the burden of finding ways to feel better solely on individuals. Leaders need to recognize that change exhaustion is not an individual issue, but a collective one that needs to be addressed at the team or organization level.
In this article, the author describes how a concept called tangential immersion can help anyone persevere in a boring task: Through a series of studies with more than 2,000 participants, she and her coauthors found that people often quit boring tasks prematurely because they don’t take up enough of their attention to keep them engaged.
