Meeting Sandrine Devillard was an amazing opportunity to learn more about McKinsey’s global partnership with the Women’s Forum which she leads as Head of the McKinsey Women EMEA initiative and member of the Forum’s Advisory Board. Published for the 2007 Forum, Women Matter: Gender diversity, a corporate performance driver was followed up in 2008 with a new study, Women Matter 2 which offers new insights on “leadership behaviours that will be critical to address the up coming challenges” and women’s “edge in spreading those leadership practices within organizations”.

Question: Can you tell us a bit more about Women Matter 2 that you discussed at Thursday’s session on “Corporate performance: looking for the “women advantage”?

Sandrine Devillard: The idea was to follow up on Women Matter and truly understand the characteristics of a woman’s leadership. 9,000 leaders from around the western world, 6,000 men and 3,000 women, were assessed through a survey (a combination of self-assessments and third-party evaluations) in order to identify the frequency with which they adopted the 9 leadership behaviours that can reinforce a company’s organizational performance. Amongst the nine leadership behaviours, women showed a much higher frequency in 3 behaviours (People development, Expectations and rewards, Role model) and a slightly higher frequency in 2 others (Inspiration and Participative decision making), while men applied more Individualistic decision-making and Control and corrective action behaviours. Both men and women equally applied Intellectual stimulation and Efficient communication behaviours. This analysis enabled us to identify more precisely the contributions that men and women are more likely to make on the dimensions of organizational performance. Our conclusion is that women strongly contribute to reinforcing a company’s performance by strengthening five organizational dimensions, three in particular.

Q: One of the participants at the session felt you were trying to oppose women and men instead of proposing diversity. Is this the case?

SD: Absolutely not. The idea is not at all to say that women are superior to men as leaders! It is a scientific study that shows, with numbers to prove it, that although leaders all apply the nine positive leadership behaviours, men and women do so with a different frequency according to the behaviours, and therefore make specific contributions to organizational performance. This advocates not only for greater diversity, and therefore for more women in top management positions, but also for developing diversity of leadership behaviours in top management.

Q: Were you satisfied by the way the participants at the Forum reacted to Woman Matter 2?

SD: I was very pleased with the positive feedback I got from everyone. Some even told me that it was the most interesting thing they had learned about at Deauville, just after the financial crisis! People acknowledge that numbers and facts showing the strength of mixed teams are critical to make change happen. What is more, the second part of the study puts these numbers in the light of global long-term trends shaping the corporate world. 1,000 managers were asked to choose, among 14 of these trends, which ones they felt would most impact there company in the next 5 years and which of the previous behaviours would be most effective in preparing for these future challenges. Women apply  3 of these 4 behaviours more. What is striking is that when asked if they were prepared for these challenges, most managers felt they were not.

Again, I wish to remind that this does not show that women should occupy all leadership positions. Since women apply most of the leadership behaviours that are critical to address future challenges more often than men, we should therefore increase gender diversity in the top management but also diversity in leadership, in order to make the most of men and women’s complementary leadership patterns.

Q: Why do you think the question is addressed scientifically for the first time in Women Matter 2?

SD: Because everybody knows that 55 percent of graduates (undergraduate) are women, everyone thought that without doing anything, and letting the natural course of things go its way, things would resolve by themselves. But our projections show that if we don’t change our approach, the increase in the percentage of female leaders will rise from 8 to only 11 percent by 2035!  We need a drastic change because there is no silver bullet.

McKinsey has a long term plan to raise diversity in management. This includes changing the way we recruit, showing more flexibility, changing mindsets…There are 50 subdivisions of these measures that are applied to our offices worldwide. These programmes will take 6 to 8 years to show results. And, if the effort is abandoned at anytime, the trend reverses quickly back to what it is now. So it is a long term investment and I believe the programs in most companies are looking for faster results. That is why they haven’t always been effective. And this is what they are starting to realise with this study. I have spent 30 percent of my time, in the last year, presenting this study to companies and Human Resources, and even had to refuse some presentations!

Q: As a final question, what advice can you give to us, women and students, at the wake of our careers?

SD: I can think of 5 things. First, and most importantly, you should have a compass. You should know what you want, decide on your values and keep to them throughout your career. Especially in uncertain times like now! You must do this work of introspection and navigate accordingly. You should also find your leadership and have the courage to apply it, with people at every level. You should not be the one holding yourself back! Also, don’t opt out! A lot of women leave the business world after their first child. But it is usually also when your career is accelerating and you are offered leadership jobs. It is very hard to come back, so you must find ways to do both! Finally, I have found that women lack self-confidence, to the point where they can be the only ones focusing on the 20 percent of competences they lack to accept a promotion rather than on the 80 percent they have. As was shown in the first Women Matter, women have a heightened sense of the obstacles ahead. Some loose faith in their ability to overcome these hurdles. But it is always better to loose a fight than to not fight at all!