The Story behind the Book
This book is the result of my personal leadership journey over more than four decades, much of it devoted to advancing and empowering women. I started writing the book with the belief that having more women leaders can make a big difference. Working on it for the past two years has convinced me more than ever that this is true. New leaders—women leaders—are needed to bring fresh air and creative ideas to meet the challenges of dramatic shifts in the world economy, communities, and companies.
Wherever decisions are made, you and women like you as leaders will add value and balance. As the humanitarian organization CARE says, “Women are the most underutilized natural resource in the world.” As women, we bring great strength, talent, and experience but are underused as leaders. Here you will find a practical guide to make it easier for you and other women to confidently step up and be the transformational leaders we need in the numbers needed to modernize and improve outmoded ways of doing business while wedging the door open for more women.
Living a Change Agent Life
My quest started a long time ago on the first day of my first job as a registered nurse in the old days, when nurses wore a starched uniform and an organdy cupcake nurse's cap. The first day didn't go well for me. I was summarily fired. Why? I hadn't stood up when a male doctor came into the room. It didn't make any difference to the nursing director whether I was taking care of a patient's needs or not. Over the years I learned the ropes in quite different settings and met dynamic women wherever my career took me. After eight years as a nurse, I moved to grassroots organizing; to state government; to national policy positions in unions, as a think-tank CEO and senior fellow, in the White House, and as an ambassador; and then in the private sector as an international management consultant in a business partnership with my husband. Like most women, I have had a full life including more than a career. Being a wife and mother, a daughter (and daughter-in-law), a sister, and a grandmother have all given me great pleasure. Family life and surviving cancer have deepened and broadened my sense of the importance of living an integrated life with many layers, not simply a work-centric one.
The common thread in my life is being a change agent. I seem to have a constitutional unwillingness to accept the status quo when it seems unfair and a determination to try to find a better way. My family background began the process: my father was a national union leader and especially talented as a communicator. As children, my brother and I were taught our responsibility was to leave the world a bit better, a bit more just. Lots of problems need solutions, but over and over, in each of my career incarnations, I've been drawn to the cause of women's advancement and empowerment.
I've often wondered why this was the case. My best guess is this: I've seen the courage, energy, tenacity, determination, and sheer talent of women both as individuals and as friends and colleagues working together to improve the status quo. At the same time I've had a nagging aversion to repeatedly seeing such talented people take a backseat to someone else, just because of gender. I've witnessed women's creativity and energy bottled up by unproductive thinking and practices, and at the same time I've seen an unfulfilled need for better leadership.
One of the big lessons of my career has been this: who makes the decisions matters. Changing who decides changes what is decided. I started to watch carefully how very slowly women were moving up into decision-making positions. The top layer of politics and business remains much the same as it was generations ago.
Women have made great progress in many areas, but changing the agenda has been elusive. Despite all the hard work on important issues that have been at the top of women's to-do lists for decades—issues like family leave and economic security, early care and education for young children, and equal pay—little has changed. To me—and most women—these are necessities for an acceptable quality of life for American families. As you know from your own experience, they remain out of reach. Our daughter and other women of her generation are dealing with many of the same problems I faced as a single mom when our children were young.
I kept expecting more women to break through and bring their talents and vision to making the big decisions. In 1995, as a U.S. delegate to a United Nations world conference on women in China, I heard exciting ideas. For the first time I heard national leaders from all corners of the globe—mostly men—talk about the positive differences it makes for their entire societies when women are fully empowered to lead along with men. They focused on how change accelerated with one-third women at the table. The tipping point was not one or even two women in decision-making groups but what I introduce in the book as the 30% Solution. In the United States, though, there was silence: no public debate on why more balanced leadership was better, and very little action to reach the goal.
So I took matters into my own hands and began to work on this book. My goal is to see you—my reader—seated at one of those power tables and wedging the door open for more and more women to join you. We have much to do. Balanced leadership with a critical mass of women—that 30% Solution—will lead to different outcomes that are better for you, for us, for everyone.
Women Lead the Way Will Help You Be a Transformational Leader
When we look at where we are now, I am reminded of the little but demanding voices from the backseat on family road trips, asking, “Are we there yet?” The statistics show we are not even close to the tipping point in most places. Statistics are important, but I wanted to know what women think about where we are. In a series of twelve informal focus groups across the country,[1] women across the board told me we are only halfway to tapping women's full talents. Almost without exception, early in these conversations a woman would say, “Our potential remains untapped,” and others around the table would agree. Women I met share the belief underlying all the statistics. We have much more to offer.
I have seen the talent and commitment of women in worlds very different from my own and learned about the important, but often unrecognized, difference women make. Women's many-layered lives—mine and those of the women I have spoken with across this country—have a seamless character. Women see the significance of being both caregivers and effective and responsible economic and public actors. The world doesn't work this way now, but this perspective helps show us what solutions are needed.
This practical guide is my response to make it easier and smoother for you to be a transformational leader and affect the outcomes when issues are decided. As you—my reader—take your seat at power tables, you can create a ripple effect by bringing other qualified women along to join you. The spreading ripples will create opportunities for more and more women. When you take action, we all move forward.
This book gets you started on a women-led strategy to make positive change—working with like-minded men—to close the leadership gap and add our solutions. The idea is a simple one: Leadership balance brings greater progress. It is good for you, helps level the playing field for the women and girls who come behind you, and brings needed societal change. To help us get further, I've brought you some of the stories from women I've met along the way as well as from my own journey as a change agent. The stories and resources will introduce you to ideas that have the potential to change where you work, your community, and the wider society to reflect our values and vision.
Women Lead the Way Will Guide Your Journey
You will find a road map and tested tools here. The win-win plan can help you climb the ladder—whatever your field—and bring your passion, brains, and background to those offices where decisions are made. Strategic guidance will help you build energy and momentum by working together with others. You will have the business case, research data, how-to tips, and stories. Each chapter includes a “Takeaways” section or a quiz for you to assess where you are and a box called “This Week I Will. . .” to give you immediate action steps to get started. More resources are at the end of the book.
The Introduction: More Women Leaders, Better Leadership gives you the basics on becoming one of the new leaders we need and explains why it matters for a busy woman like you to engage. The bottom-line importance of balanced leadership reached through the 30% Solution is explained. You will discover how an Inside-Outside strategy of women Insiders at power tables working with Outsider advocates can create movement on long-stalled priorities.
I've written the book in two major sections. Part I: Women Lead the Way starts you off on your journey with the facts you need. Part II: Stepping Up to Leadership provides the tools you need as one woman, and we need as women together, to maximize our leadership potential. Resources follow the text to help you find additional information.
Part I: Women Lead the Way
Chapter 1: The 30% Solution explores how this proven and realistic catalyst for a wave of change works. Having at least one-third women making decisions has powerful positive outcomes, while having only one or a few women won't have the same effect. You will see why and how this concept brings about positive bottom-line results in contrast to current practice.
While the 30% Solution is practical and workable, some hurdles remain to getting there. Chapter 2: Modern Myths and Stereotypes confronts and dispels overhanging and self-reinforcing negative social and cultural attitudes. Chapter 3: The Everywoman Quiz gives you and your friends a way to check out real-world progress on women's leadership.
As women, we sometimes have preconceptions that gain the strength of myths and can cloud our recognition of systemic barriers to be addressed. Chapter 4: Breaking out of the Box gives you an opportunity to assess your Personal Confidence Factor, to face up to some “double-bind dilemmas” women find on the way up, and to resist personalization.
Hope is on the horizon. Chapter 5: Today's Transformational Leader helps you confidently promote and embody the leadership attributes, styles, and skills that fit many women naturally and are needed to meet the future head-on. Leaving old, outdated leadership models behind will strengthen your resolve.
Part II: Stepping Up to Leadership
The first practical tool is presented in Chapter 6: Starting Right Here, Right Now. Learn from the experience of other women and start where you are to make a difference every day. You can meet the leadership challenge with confidence knowing that change starts with the Power of One.
Chapter 7: Making Women's Power Visible presents the second tool, helping you create a buzz by highlighting women's differences and strengths as employees, customers, or clients. This changes the dynamics of determining the problems to be addressed and who can best solve them.
We move on to the next step in Chapter 8: Lifting as We Climb. You will learn more about how reaching a hand out to help other women and girls starts a chain reaction and increases your own leadership capacity and energy. When we join together, the effect doubles.
Next we take up how to magnify this approach. Chapter 9: Wedging the Door Open gives you an amazingly easy technique that really works to fast-track change in existing practices. The “women in every pool” plan makes sure least one woman is a finalist for every opening to accelerate progress.
Chapter 10: Together, We Rise puts all of this together by helping you strengthen your networks to give you the undergirding of support and mentoring every leader needs. Shared action through networking by starting small and continuing to widen the circle of impact and sustenance brings you—and all of us—further.
Now is the time to dream a little about where we should be in 2020— one hundred years after women won the right to vote. What will our legacy be when the glass ceiling has smashed to the ground and women are full partners with men in determining our destiny? The Conclusion: Dreaming Bigger Dreams challenges you and all of us to act as transformational leaders and change the world.
A Personal Note to My Readers
I hope the women you meet in this book will inspire you as they have inspired me. Beyond that, I trust you will be motivated to try some of the tools in this book to help you advance in your own leadership and be sure more and more other women have an opportunity to be leaders, too. The potential of balanced leadership is tremendous. Companies, communities, and this country can't afford to continue to pass up the full utilization of one of our greatest natural resources—women. You and other women and like-minded men can lead us to a different future by making sure we don't.
—Linda Tarr-Whelan
July 2009
