Maybe you are a CEO, Chief Talent Officer, Business Unit Leader or DE&I Champion.
Your company is a Fortune 1000, or possibly a leader in your sector. You know the importance of building a high-performing culture, and future-ready leaders are essential to your organization’s success.
You want to be valued as an innovative leader in your profession, who can lead the transformation that your organization needs to compete. Your peers and CEO see this as a top priority, however, your team still hasn’t been able to identify a sustainable solution to the persistent turnover of mid-level talent. To reach your ESG commitments and to drive real transformation at the top of the organization, you need a stronger bench of leading women in your talent pipeline.
You are losing valuable talent, engagement is low and burnout is high. You are asking yourself, “How do we ensure HR is a strategic partner in addressing Leadership’s concerns over retention, and developing the next generation of top talent?”
You and your team spend a great deal of time assessing human capital strategy against emerging business needs while looking for clues in the data. This requires you to be agile, and examine if the programs in place are actually aligned with the outcomes needed to move the business forward.
You are stressed and perplexed. The rising inflation, labor shortages, supply chain issues and changing consumer behavior are all relevant issues with lasting impact on your business. The programs you have put in place before are not moving the needle. You are looking for innovative human capital solutions that can leverage the digital transformation of your organization at scale. However, you haven’t put your finger on it just yet. You think about solutions in the shower; you are reading all the books…
You know you are on the verge of a shift, but it will take a fresh approach. You are certain that once you solve this gap, you will be a catalyst to transform the organization and drive greater value.
If you want to learn about how other best-in-class talent leaders are shifting the paradigm post-COVID around readiness, retention, development and advancement for leading mid-career women, then this is for you.
According to a study by the National Women’s Law Center from 2021, women have faced the bulk of pandemic-related employment losses. Research shows that women in the United States have lost almost 5.4 million net employment since February 2020.
Two critical high-impact issues for CEOs and CHROs are attract and retain talent and develop “Next Gen” leaders, according to The Conference Board C-Suite Outlook 2022.
According to a survey by Seramount, 50% of multicultural women are considering leaving their companies within the next two years.
Mckinsey states that executive teams that are racially diversified are 33% more likely to outperform their peers on profitability, and those with executive-level gender diversity worldwide had a 21% likelihood of outperforming their industry competitors.
So how do you solve the root issue to recruit, retain, ready and advance women leaders and the intersectionality of multicultural women leaders in particular, to bridge the gap?
The truth is that you CAN retain, develop and advance leaders if you understand your blind spots, and use the right methodology built for the modern workplace. Many talent and DE&I development programs focus on structural barriers, institutional bias and individual competencies to address the leadership gap with women. We identify these as the external barriers and social identity for women leaders. While important, these focal points alone fall short.
The missing link to advance women further and faster while building a culture of top performance is to address the hidden barriers of leadership, which we call the internal barriers: Clarity, Confidence, Competence and Connections. In our experience, these are often overlooked and under-recognized as contributing factors as to why women will choose to leave or stay within an organization when looking at their work and well-being holistically.
People leaders fail to solve this persistent issue because there is a blind spot in assessing and addressing the leadership gap with women in their organizations. The 4 Cs of Clarity, Confidence, Competence and Connections is a powerful insight to assess current programs focused on women development, retention and advancement.
Unfortunately far too many CHROs, Chief Talent Officers and Heads of Sales are not aware of this blind spot, thus miss the opportunity to get to the root cause to shape a sustainable new outcome. We have dedicated the last decade to solving this problem with a proven methodology and platform that has delivered breakthrough results.
Our CEO, Melissa Dawn Simkins, also known as “The First Lady of Personal Branding” is a pioneer in personal brand leadership with a proven track record of advising Fortune 100 organizations, CEOs, C-suite executives and influencers. She is a sought after strategist on how to lead change in the face of adversity.
As a mother, wife and leader she deeply understands the challenge of burnout and overwhelm that can sidetrack so many women in their careers. As a classically trained marketer, she has worked for Procter & Gamble, Nationwide Insurance, Victoria’s Secret and Baxter Healthcare. She intimately understands the dynamics and the demands of the corporate world.
She looked everywhere for a viable solution, but couldn’t find one, and decided to solve the problem herself through developing a scalable, whole life leadership coaching community called The She-Suite Brand Leadership Institute (BLI) to support the sustainability of women leaders, as well as the transformation of company cultures.
For nearly a decade, The She-Suite has served more than 25,000 women around the world, in partnership with Fortune 100 clients like AstraZeneca, Boston Scientific and many more.
The BLI uniquely addresses the intersection of race and gender and has been a powerful solution for all women, multicultural women in particular, and is now scaling globally.
The work was birthed from her own experience and desire to reset the standard to define a new success paradigm called “whole life leadership” – focused on purpose-driven work and well-being for sustainability. Relevance and readiness are core to her approach as she gives insight around future-ready talent development, whole life leadership and brand leadership innovation.
She is the CEO of the Velvet Suite® (www.velvetsuite.com) an award-winning leadership innovation firm advancing the future of profit through people and the Founder of The She-Suite®, the female focused platform of Velvet Suite on a mission to break the outdated paradigm of work by empower working women to boldly design a career and life with purpose (theshesuite.com).
The She-Suite Brand Leadership Institute (BLI), is the only online leadership readiness platform community built to scale with proven results to ready, retain and advance all women and women of color who work for large enterprises.
She is also an investor and former contributor to Inc.com and has been a frequent guest on media outlets such as CNN, CNBC, HLN and more. She authored the book, Brand Me. Make Your Mark: The Ultimate Playbook for Personal Branding. As a sought-after keynote speaker on leadership innovation her methodology has been shared around the world.
The old way of 1-on-1 executive coaching is exclusive, slow and cost prohibitive, which results in linear leadership development. This is often isolated, lonely and left only for a few at the top.
The new model requires a dynamic approach that builds momentum through scale. This means prioritizing both a digitally driven virtual experience, as well as curriculum focused on holistic leadership that drives change for the individual, team and enterprise.
This leads to the ability to ready and support the development of mid-level talent before you lose them. The premise here is to build your bench of top performers, sponsors, mentors and senior male support.
As stated by SHRM, Gloat, and Forbes, providing sponsors, mentors and senior male support to women leads to higher employee satisfaction and retention. Providing this multilayer support democratizes executive coaching and allows scale.
Companies who innovate will have a hybrid learning and development model that mirrors the workplace; giving employees the autonomy to take control of their own development experience, on their time.
The old way to define career paths used to be training focused in individual assessments, skills and competency development for the role or function. This limited view of leadership develop misses the mark as self-management is the new future-ready competency that drives greater engagement, productivity and career sustainability for women in particular.
For women, the expectations both in and outside of the workplace are different, and as a result, women more often feel overwhelmed and overworked.
The great She-cession amplified what we already knew. Working women are twice as likely as their male counterparts to run the household, three times more likely to manage their children’s schedules, and eight times more likely to require time off to care for a sick child. They’re also three times as likely to volunteer for school or community activities.
The new model is to drive clarity around career and life, holistically driven by purpose, which results in better time management and alignment to priorities.
Career strategies are intertwined with life strategies to clarify purpose, align intention, streamline productivity, masterfully delegate and learn to draw necessary boundaries. This crucial side of leadership development for women is missed in the old paradigm.
Purpose-oriented employees are more likely to be promoted, more likely to be promoters of their employer’s brand, and more likely to be fulfilled by their work, leading to higher retention.
In the old paradigm, leadership development started and stopped with the female leader. This myopic focus provided transactional development support for the employee, yet lacked sustainable impact. Why? Because the biggest challenge to retention is often the relationship with the manager.
A Udemy study found that nearly half of employees surveyed had quit because of a bad manager, and almost two-thirds believed their manager lacked proper managerial training.
Women of color are less likely to feel supported by managers than white women, and less likely to feel their skills are valued and leveraged by their employers, according to new research by nFormation and the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative.
In the new way, we build a coaching culture based upon action and accountability, not just of women but also of their managers. Managers learn inclusive leadership not from a class or a workshop but from real, hands-on experience in partnership with their direct report. Through exercises, accountability sessions, and by meeting and discussing challenges with other managers, they’re empowered to build their own people through the leadership competency. This is how we turn individual development into cultural transformation.
Leadership competence is critical for the transformation of female leaders in terms of their long-term individual career.
The empirical basis of the above statement is predicated on the results of the longitudinal study where researchers repeatedly examined the same individuals / female leaders to detect any changes that might occur over a period of time.
The old way of building future-ready competence in female leaders involved a minimalist view of the competency, solely tied to the job skills and requirements, which ultimately led to leaders functioning in roles without context of how to lead with agility and resilience in an ever-changing world.
The new way is for women leaders to be taught the competence of future-ready leaders and the ability to adapt, think critically and navigate through times of uncertainty. This results in stronger leaders of teams, the ability to problem solve, and leverage their network to create change across the organization.
Many organizations are challenged to find these types of leaders, but women leaders who graduate from the BLI have breakthrough impacts in promotion, retention, purpose-driven leadership and relationships with their managers.
The organization must be ready to embrace these leaders, support their journey and build upon the positive momentum to create systemic cultural change.
“Connections have been the single most critical thing for my career advancement.’’ – Kelly Watson, KPMG Partner and Board Member
Leadership is lonely, and women leaders who don’t build their support network experience greater feelings of isolation.
In the new way, connectedness is critical to confidence through an expanded network. We amplify your internal network through building a cross-company cohort model with alumni support and build bonds that support women through their career and life transitions. We also bring together like-minded women leaders from across different companies, industries and countries across the globe for peer mentoring and support. We build a “safe space” for truthful and transparent connections without fear of judgement by the employer. Together focusing on the hard work to re-work, re-charge and re-emerge; ready to accelerate performance on purpose.
Graduates of the BLI coined this the #BLIBond and forge relationships that last a lifetime.
If you are a CEO, Chief Talent Officer, Business Unit Leader or DE&I Champion but you still have not figured out how to address the persistent gap on your own and your current providers are not delivering a fresh solution, we would love to introduce you to our proven, tested and trusted approach.
In the past, when you wanted to solve the leadership gap with women, you would have to do executive 1-on-1 coaching or host a series of development in person training days or attend a conference. Possibly, your organization due to COVID turned to creating a portal of virtual training videos to provide digital access to content without accountability. The old way is slow, exclusive, cost prohibitive and ineffective. But now, you can use The Brand Leadership Institute (BLI) the only enterprise e-learning readiness platform and community experience to democratize executive coaching globally with a proven methodology, community and accountability system for both women leaders and their managers. The six month experience delivers tangible outcomes including future-ready leadership competency to empower women with a roadmap to sustain their careers and obtain greater life clarity, mitigate burnout, build stronger connections within the organization and outside, strengthen the relationship with their manager and achieve greater advocacy and exposure for their contributions to the company.
Now, you can holistically drive clarity around career and life, led by purpose, which results in better time management and alignment to priorities.
Before, when you wanted to build confidence, you would focus only on knowing the position. But now, with the BLI we focus on helping leaders find, know and align their purpose to every aspect of their career and life with a planning system called the 90-day way to support accomplishing big goals in 12 week sprints.
The results are a new protype of leader ready to advance with out-of-comfort zone confidence, skills and frameworks to coach and lead others, future ready competence and productivity enhancements, an internal network of powerful connections and managers who are more competent and confident in developing diverse talent.
The BLI is the first enterprise e-learning leadership readiness platform and community to ready, retain and advance all women and women of color in particular as well as their direct managers. This 24-week experience offers 12 courses and 12 weeks of action and accountability along with live monthly masterclass sessions, progress reporting, pre and post assessments, virtual bi-monthly coaching support, office hours, life book workbook, cohort community, accountability partner pairing as well as cross-company networking and so much more. We offer this experience as a multi-year cohort based virtual interactive experience uniquely bridges the intersection of race and gender with proven results to scale company-wide.
The BLI has always been a virtual learning and community experience, even before the pandemic. What we find now more than ever, your employees are stretched thin for time. They are looking for self-directed, yet guided experiences that can enable them to take the learning journey at their convenience but also to build deeper and meaningful relationships with others on the same journey. Our instruction and experiential design is anchored on learning as well as community.
Dependent upon where the cohort members are from, sometimes there will be a face to face meeting over the six months. However, the cost savings to the company is significant without impacting the overall quality of the experience.
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