They need equitable and consistent access to high-quality leadership development opportunities-period. Women don’t need separate leadership development programs built just for them. Model inclusive behaviors, and encourage others to do the same.Apply an equity lens to provide everyone visibility, access, and opportunity.Celebrate and integrate differences, and exhibit cultural intelligence.Ensure all voices, especially marginalized voices, are heard and amplified.Instead, they make these into educational or teachable moments for their team.Ĭoaching helps leaders develop the vital capabilities to promote and model inclusive behaviors. This means intentionally creating moments in their day-to-day leadership that invite in all voices and perspectives and not avoiding conversations that can be uncomfortable.

Coaches also encourage leaders to invite different perspectives. Through highly personalized sessions, coaches challenge leaders to examine their behaviors and unconscious biases that hinder diversity of thought. Leadership coaching provides leaders with this space. To become a leader who promotes DEI, rather than one who just says that they do, leaders need the space to examine how their existing mindsets and behaviors contribute to or hinder how others experience them. Where Leadership Coaching Can HelpLeaders of any gender must develop the right leadership capabilities and behaviors this is where coaching can make a difference. In that case, they must invest carefully and intentionally in leadership development programs that complement women-focused DEI initiatives and result in an optimal leadership culture. Suppose companies are to achieve the returns they desire. This results in less diversity of thought, lower morale, decreased productivity, and limited innovation, all of which influence overall employee well-being and profitability. Why Invest in DEI Initiatives That Elevate Women Leaders’ Impact? As newer, more ambitious generations of women continue the search for workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion, the leadership gap widens. Women choose to work for companies that prioritize flexibility, employee well-being, and DEI initiatives.Women often work a second shift after business hours, resulting in poor work-life balance.Women do more employee well-being and inclusion-focused work, yet it often goes unrewarded.Despite ambitions and comparable or greater education, women encounter more barriers to career advancement.

Women are often given female-engendered responsibilities beyond their job description.

Women still experience more belittling microaggressions than men.

This workplace exodus of women can be attributed to these trends: These numbers are likely to get worse before they get better, as we’re currently deep into repercussions from the “Great Breakup,” a period marked by American companies losing generations of diverse female talent at a rather alarming rate.

Further, women make up only 40 percent of manager-level employees as of 2022. Now consider-the 2022 Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey, in partnership with LeanIn.Org, shows that only 25 percent of C-suite executives are women, and only 5 percent of these executives are women of color. Within profitable companies, the study also found that increasing women leadership by 30 percent resulted in a 15 percent increase in the net revenue margin. This number dropped to 78 percent for companies without a woman CEO. The Current State of Gender-Based DEI InitiativesAn estimated 87 percent of Fortune 500 companies with women CEOs reported above-average profits in 2021, according to a Yet, few can argue that women leaders do create demonstrable business impact. This lack is even more evident among women of color. According to IBM’s Women Leadership report, fewer women were in leadership pipelines in 2021 than in 2019.

Despite the measurable strides gender-based DEI initiatives have helped to bring about in corporate America, the inclusion of women in leadership ranks has slowed.

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