Women are trained to be hard working and dependable while behaving in a predictable way: the perfect recipe to be overlooked for career development. How do we change this at the personal and cultural levels? Averil and Kaye discuss men’s so called easy life, shared parental leave and aspects of confidence…

You’ll have heard about the 2010 Harvard Business School case study where the same professional’s CV was presented as either that of a Heidi Roizen or Howard Roizen? Sight unseen, biased judgment interpreted the same CV in radically different ways. Opinions about Heidi were much harsher than Howard across the board. Just as competent and effective but deemed aggressive rather than assertive. They just didn’t like her or wanted to hire her.

This study led to changes, e.g. blind auditions for orchestra recruitment. It was amazing how many great female musicians were identified when applicants were chosen for their sound rather than their gender. No-one believed they were favouring men over women until that playing field was levelled.

What lies below

Being a woman is still a real Catch 22: lack confidence, you likely won’t succeed. If you display as much confidence as many men, you likely won’t succeed.

The problem with unconscious bias is, of course, that it is unconscious. If we bring one deeply held and outmoded belief to the forefront of our minds and challenge it, we have no idea how many others exist just out of sight. Political correctness also plays its part in obscuring what people truly think. People mind what they say so there is no opportunity for challenge.

Every now and then, however, something just slips out and shows what lurks beneath. A client of ours, a senior banker working at a strategic level transforming the bank on the high street, decided to leave for a lower stress job, with a different culture, that was prepared to pay her even more.

A male peer greeted the news with: “yes but you must just work for pin money. Your husband has a good job”… 

And there it all was, out in the open. Deep down, he didn’t really believe women needed or wanted the money. They had men, despite the vast number of women who are in single parent families, divorced or the main breadwinner in their family. Consider the implications for recruitment and retention if you hold odd or outmoded beliefs about women’s ambition, commitment, loyalty and need for money. This could also be why, despite the lower ratios of women, they are often the first ones to be ‘let go’ when redundancy strikes. Well, there must be a man somewhere paying their way…

Perhaps recruitment issues start even earlier. In conversation with women bankers in private wealth, they talked about what a good career it was for women, especially as there is an increasingly greater number of women wealthy in their own right (though divorce and inheritance might have played a part for some). They described how all the adverts, websites, reports they saw used stock images that implied it was a job for very traditional, public school, wood panelled males. As a result, women, due to their own unconscious bias, saw that it wasn’t the place for them. 

How to change this unconscious bias? 

Improving the ratio of women starts with the adverts, job specs, interview process, just to make sure you start fishing in the entire talent pool. Sometimes you have to go out and entice women before they realise the opportunities they could have with you. 

It is worth the effort for some of the following reasons:

• There is strong evidence of high female performance in the industry. For example a recent Goldman Sachs report showed that all-women or mixed gender fund teams have outperformed all-male portfolio management teams so far this year. 
• Over the 10 years since we published our research with the London School of Economics and the book Coaching Women to Lead, men have learned to talk a good game about the need for higher diversity but, in many sectors including Investment Management, this is just skin deep: deep down, the CEOs and senior executives don’t really believe in women’s ability to do as well as them. They still have unconscious bias about risk attitude for example (long debunked).

• It is the Board’s responsibility to push the executive team to do something about it and go beyond a box ticking exercise: it is just good business sense.

• Our research clearly shows that what is good for women is good for ‘diverse’ groups: ignore this at your peril as diversity becomes the norm.


Therefore, not actively recruiting, promoting and developing women looks like a wilful act of negligence or a deliberate exclusion. Time for the Board to hold execs to account.


It is expensive to recruit and then lose women to your competitors. How do you ensure they stay and rise through the ranks, effectively balancing your gender profile as they go? If you don’t truly understand why they leave, nothing changes. If you don’t have a plan and make people accountable, you will fail and fall behind your competitors.

Do you, like many firms, start off with a good proportion of women at entry level, then rather carelessly lose 50% every 5 years? Are you as profligate with other precious resources? Has your focus been on buying in women at the most senior levels in order to hit gender diversity targets?


I have been talking about this since our original research 15 years ago revealed the extent of the waste. The business case has been made repeatedly for having women at every level in the organisation. It is not about being nice and fair. It is about the bottom line, the different thinking, creativity and the increase in profits that come with a more diverse workforce.

Where do the women go?

Why can’t you keep your women and grow them up through the business? Why do they leave you? Where are they now?

Well, they certainly aren’t at home making cupcakes. Most likely they are working for your competitors. They probably left because they did not see a future with you. It may have been a lack of female role models, or the lack of feedback or an unfair raise or bonus, or because their line manager never explored their ambition or built a development plan with them. These are just some of the reasons women give for moving on. We sometimes feel they didn’t give their employer the best chance. They did not communicate their rage. They just left. 

We encourage women to make their ambition and desire for development explicit. Often, they feel let down that no-one took the initiative or encouraged them to stay. So, they just left.

Women lie

The other thing we discovered is that many women do not tell the truth in their exit interview. Most men probably don’t either. If you don’t understand why you haemorrhage women, you are not well equipped to staunch the flow. As an outside consultant, speaking in confidence, I get the real story. Culture plays a big part. Relationships and opportunities account for the rest. If women do not see the signal that this is the place for them, they will leave and never give you the benefit of that insight.

Grow your own

It is much less expensive to hang on to the excellent women you have already appointed than to try and keep backfilling as they fade away. Rather than focus on expensive external hires at executive levels, focus on talent management of your women from the moment they join your company. Grow them up in the business, building loyalty and commitment, by giving them a vision of the possibilities in their careers.

What does it take? 

First, commit to a plan to achieve gender parity at all levels. Most people have it in writing in a policy somewhere. Make it real.

Second, understand when and why you are losing women. What are the variables? Discover where the leaks occur and what needs to change for women to want to stay with you.

Third, invest in coaching and development to ensure women are ready for the next promotion. Women’s ambition may not look exactly like their male counterparts. 

Remember that the organisation was probably designed by and for men. Things may need to change. For more information about the business case for diversity, equity, and inclusion, please click here.

The maths of gender diversity:

Evidence from the City is that women are performing at least as well as men in fund management, the law, insurance, and banking. It is equally true in ‘real’ industries outside the City. So how do you convince those in power to pay more attention to recruitment and retention? – Simple: show them everyone stands to gain.

From macro to micro

In our new edition of Coaching Women to Lead we show, once again, that there is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that gender-balanced teams perform better. Somehow this fails to resonate at individual company level, so we need to dig deeper.

Sector behaviour

Some sectors are more traditional than others and some are better at extracting cash value from diversity policy. Banking – investment banking in particular – has a high-fear environment, making it more difficult for diversity policies to take hold unless there is very strong sponsorship.

Companies within sectors will rapidly copy each other: when we worked on gender in oil engineering, the sector was willing to ‘do something’ but our clients were the first global company to really invest in the development and retention of women in all its activities, giving it a head-start but then also spurring others to emulate them. The same is true in City law firms or insurance for example.

Each talent pipeline is different

Even though all law firms start with a majority of female newly qualified lawyers, the timing and speed at which they lose them along the way to equity partner varies greatly: if you don’t understand where and why you are leaking talent then you won’t get the benefits of greater diversity, no matter what your sector.

Modelling for results

When we started modelling the cash impact of gender diversity – simply tapping the full talent pool and retaining high performers – we calculated that in a professional services firm a balanced blend would give every partner, male or female, an extra 10% net profit. This far outweighed the cost of introducing more flexibility or technology in the firm.

When we tried our model in real life we were faced with the usual pushback of “we are a meritocracy”, “natural female talent will emerge”, “we don’t do positive discrimination” and so on. A firm we worked with also confided discreetly that female partners were actually underperforming men. This was a bit of a challenge, so we really crunched the numbers with their HR team. Much to the surprise of the managing partner, the female performance data were inaccurate and women performed at least as well as the top male quartile. What weighed the average down was actually a long tail of underperforming men who had fallen below the radar. By then the business case for more women partners was compelling.

Adding bias to recruitment

Each industry, each company has a history which is reflected in the profile of incumbent managers. Not only gender but also race, education, social aptitude and so on. Many industries at the junior level have been working hard to remove bias with nameless CVs, providing aptitude tests independent of academic qualifications, etc.
The challenge for most companies is at a more senior level: how do you get top female performers as the number of candidates dwindles with seniority? – With a clear bias: demand females on every list, ask for an equal number of male and female candidates for promotion panels, use female networks, etc. Given the low numbers of senior women on the market, you’re highly unlikely to be accused of discrimination and you will do everybody’s take home pay a favour.

Conclusion: follow Tolstoy

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy

You really need to understand the unique way in which you are still failing to attract and retain female talent. Only then can you do something about it. Creating a quantitative model of your talent pipeline will help you build a clear business case, including the level of investment required to write a happy ending…

Glastonbury cancelled again, James Bond postponed again, holidays on hold again. Is there a trick to deal with this drip drip of disappointment? – Averil demonstrates how to build anticipation and therefore resilience

What continues to prevent chief executives from accessing the entire talent pool, rather than favouring men?

City Wire’s Wealth Manager Magazine asks Averil Leimon why despite strong evidence of high performance so few women were promoted to senior positions in Investment Management. Here is a summary of her thoughts:

• There is strong evidence of high female performance in the industry. For example a recent Goldman Sachs report showed that all-women or mixed gender fund teams have outperformed all-male portfolio management teams so far this year. 
• Over the 10 years since we published our research with the London School of Economics and the book Coaching Women to Lead, men have learned to talk a good game about the need for higher diversity but, in many sectors including Investment Management, this is just skin deep: deep down, the CEOs and senior executives don’t really believe in women’s ability to do as well as them. They still have unconscious bias about risk attitude for example (long debunked).
• It is the Boards’ responsibility to push the executive team to do something about it and go beyond a box ticking exercise: it is just good business sense.
• We are preparing the second edition of the book and research clearly shows that what is good for women is good for ‘diverse’ groups: ignore this at your peril as diversity becomes the norm.
• Therefore not actively recruiting, promoting and developing women looks like a wilful act of negligence or a deliberate exclusion. Time for the Board to hold execs to account.

For a description of turning box ticking into success – in Investment Management or other industries – start here

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