In a recent video, I shared that there are four ingredients needed when it comes to retaining employees – and they’re not the fancy ingredients, they’re the basics; the simple ingredients. It’s all about humanity, flexibility, opportunity, and intentionality. However, one of those is a missing ingredient so often when it comes to women in the workforce, especially when we’re talking about advancing women into leadership positions. And it’s opportunity.
Opportunity is often the one ingredient that’s missing if we want to really accelerate womenm fill the leadership pipeline, and get them into the C-suite or on your boards.
Opportunity is that missing ingredient. In a 2022 LinkedIn survey, they found that over 30% of women said that they thought opportunity for growth should be one of their manager’s top priorities. And while I absolutely agree, I do challenge that it’s should be everybody’s priority; that the individual, the manager, and the organization should be looking at, are we providing opportunity for everyone?
Are you training your individual employees about how to look for opportunity, so that they know? When they’re 20-something coming in new to the workforce, they don’t necessarily know how to look for new opportunities. They don’t know what the protocol is, how to ask, how to negotiate, how to plan for it. So are you training the individual employees about how to look for opportunities?
Are leaders providing opportunities equally and fairly, especially bringing things like challenging, high visibility assignments and projects, especially to women. Those high visibility projects are a great way for opportunities to almost present themselves, for doors to open on their own. And organizations, are you tracking your hiring? Are you tracking your promotions, to make sure that there isn’t a pattern of where equal opportunity isn’t provided?
We challenge that it is everybody’s responsibility to join forces, find partnerships, and collaborate together so that there can be opportunity for everyone to grow, advance, and really accelerate. So where are you today? What role could you be a part of, to really create opportunity as that no longer missing ingredient for advancing women in leadership, advancing women. Where’s your role, what could you be doing today? That’s the challenge that I give you!
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