Look, Men Are Talking About Gender-Balanced Leadership!

We witness that men are talking about football, politics, economy, etc. most of the time. They are now talking about gender-balanced leadership and women empowerment. We coded as if these two areas are only women’s concerns. However, things started to change and there are men who share the same concerns and have already been taking action for a change.

What made them increase their number in talking about gender-balanced leadership? It is the fifty questions of the PWN Global Engaging Men Manifesto that provided a platform for them to show their dedication for this subject.

As a background for those who are not familiar with PWN Global Engaging Men Manifesto yet, it is the output of the PWN Engaging Men workshop series on gender-balanced leadership with participation male executives. 

In November 2020, I started a PWN Global Engaging Men video series with male executives. I asked each inspiring man one of these fifty manifesto questions in each video. Their examples are perfect guidelines for the executives who want to do more in this area. These videos have also great tips for the corporate companies considering their D&I initiatives to take up to the next level.

Highlights from their speeches

On sticking to our decision, when it is inconvenient:

“Real life gives us a lot of opportunities to test ourselves if we walk the talk. Our instinct pushes us to take the easy way. Hiring a pregnant woman is a great example. Appointing a woman in male dominant environment like a sales position where there is macho culture is another good example. When I look back on my career, I have made a lot of these mistakes. There were a lot of times that I took the easy way and I took the easy decisions. Luckily, I started taking the not-easy decisions and stuck to my original approach: I hired a pregnant woman as marketing director. It proves to be one of the best hires that I have ever done. So, what to do? I use two principles that guide me: 

• Is that the right thing to do for the business in the long term?
• What would I do if a person who I love very much was in this situation? For example, "If this person was my daughter, how would I behave?”

We know what the right decision is, and we just need to do it.

On positive discrimination for the gender with disadvantage:

“Gender-balance is crucial for establishing a good performing team. When I would hire a manager for male dominant supply chain team, I had two shortlisted candidates for this role. Even though we know that the male candidate’s skill set was slightly higher than the woman candidate's, I chose the woman candidate to balance my team. After she started, we immediately observed good results. The performance of the overall team has boosted in a short time. We were not observing a professional attitude amongst the male dominant team members, previously. Male dominant teams’ value addition is not comparable to that of a balanced team. Having a gender-balanced team brings good business results than a single gender dominant team."

On supporting a not-for-profit organization:

"We are supporting NGOs financially. We are working on branding for a specific NGO called women in block-chain technology. We are working on bringing out a brand of them. We are working on a very special segment, on the other hand: I call them divorced amazon mothers. Those are divorced women with a child and with a strong career. They deserve to be known much better. We take this segment very seriously and we are trying to show how important this segment is.” 

On equal pay:

“One of the most crucial topics in the business world in recent years is to ensure equal opportunities and equal pay to all genders. In other words, removing the glass ceiling. Globally, the gender pay gap still stands at 16% according to the UN Women Unit in favor of women It means women earn 84% of what men earn. On behalf of my company Efes and personally myself, this has to be changed. Recently, we obtained the certificate of equality of women at work, following the detailed assessments by Intertek and Sustainability Steps Association. We value this certificate very much, because it proves that we provide equal value the work of our employees, no matter the gender. All the things we do on this is how our respect and passion to create a fair and respectful workplace to our women employees.”

On appointing women to the roles to step up to head of organization role:

“Currently two thirds of my executive team are women. That was not the case before. We had a lot of capable women in my organization. What I observed was that women tend to be less outspoken about asking for career progression and also are more demanding of themselves in applying for hard positions if they don’t really feel 100% sure that they are able to succeed. I think the duty of  the leadership team is to spot early talents and ensure that we create an inclusive environment for women. We should aim at helping them to overcome any potential external barriers and also personal barriers like for example lack of self-confidence in their own capabilities: My previous senior vice-president of operations was a woman who worked in operation for 28 years. I saw her potential of becoming the future CEO. She needs more diverse experience to be considered such a role. She felt very much comfortable in her position and was reluctant to change. I suggested she could do a job rotation to run the expansion division. Knowing that it would be a completely new area for her, she would require a lot of new knowledge and capabilities which she did not have yet. To eliminate her concerns, I proposed her to organize three different mentors from other markets to help her and reconfirm my full support. After several weeks of discussion, she accepted reluctantly to change.  The results ever since that she achieved have beaten all the previous expansion records. She achieved more than she thought.”

These are some of the great examples mentioned by our Manbassadors. The great examples are not limited to these highlights. You can watch more of them to get inspired by visiting our PWN Global LinkedIn pages in the “Videos” section and you can help other people to get inspired by introducing our PWN videos.

 Author: Funda Sezgin, VP Engaging Men, PWN Global