Why Female Leadership in South Africa and Globally Is the Business Imperative of Our Time
Female leadership in South Africa and across the world is no longer a diversity conversation. It is a performance conversation. Imagine you are a judge in a fiendishly complicated case. Not only the issue itself, but all the surrounding circumstances. And the implications, for generations ahead, of your judgement. You would hope for wisdom. You would want courage, clarity of thought and negotiation skill. You might wish for the powers of the ancient Greek goddess, Athena.
In their 2013 book The Athena Doctrine: How Women (and the Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future, John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio make a compelling case. They argue not just for the necessity of empowering women, but for the wholesale adoption of many of women’s attributes and intrinsic behaviours. Men, too, should understand the advantages these bring to businesses and societies. Cultivating these traits improves all-round leadership and performance. It adds exponential value to the organisation.
The pandemic crisis has sharpened this argument further. It has highlighted the leadership qualities required for the next normal. Most of them are female-oriented. We need to embrace them now.
Performance Excellence: The Data Behind Female Leadership
Some of the most conclusive evidence that female leadership delivers is in a five-year tracking study by leading equity trading and finance company MSCI.
Having three female directors is a tipping point. Companies with at least three women on their boards showed a median improvement of 10% in Return-on-Equity (ROE) and 37% in Earnings-per-Share (EPS). These scores were significantly better than companies without women on their boards. MSCI’s managing director for research, Lind-Eling Lee, explains: “Such superior performance from companies with at least three female board members may derive from better decision-making by a more diverse group of directors, as some studies hypothesise. But outperformance may also be tied to greater gender diversity among senior leadership and the rest of the workforce, which has been correlated with reduced turnover and higher employee engagement.”
McKinsey conducted a meta-analysis of 200 companies. They also ran a series of follow-up studies synthesising further academic research. They probed for specific leadership behaviours that drove organisational excellence. Nine were identified. These included participative and individualistic decision-making, being a role model, developing people, formulating clear expectations and rewards, and control and corrective action.
Here is the important finding. Statistically, McKinsey’s study shows that women apply five of these nine behaviours more frequently than men.
“In particular, developing people, expectation and rewards, and being a role model were found to be special strengths of female leaders.”
Like MSCI, McKinsey concluded that having women in leadership positions is vital. If women comprise at least 30% of the board, the impact becomes transformational.
Seeing Things Differently: Female Leadership and the Post-Pandemic Normal
McKinsey’s research is over a decade old. The pandemic has added fresh evidence. A current study by Zenger/Folkman concludes simply that women are better leaders during a crisis. The evidence also points to areas where women are unequivocally stronger overall. Relationship-building, pivoting for new skills, nuanced decision-making and inspiration are all better demonstrated by female leaders. Crisis or not.
These conclusions echo The Athena Doctrine. Its statistical finding was pithy but seismic. Of the 64,000 people surveyed in Gerzema’s and D’Antonio’s research, two-thirds thought the world would be a better place if men thought more like women.
This has fundamental implications for how companies are led and managed in the next normal.
The World's Problems Are Complex: Why Long-Term Thinking Matters
From short-term goals to long-term ambitions and beyond, a growing realisation is taking hold. What really counts in business is forging a legacy. Leading global business consultant Jim Collins talks about leaders who serve. They go to extraordinary lengths to build a company with a cause-centred vision. The notion itself is rooted in the role of a nurturer. That is a feminine trait.
“And the attributes which will fulfil the vision are female-biased: long-term thinking, patience, caring, humility and kindness.”
Purpose, performance and long-term thinking
Indra Nooyi broke America’s corporate glass ceiling when she became PepsiCo’s CEO in 2006. She was one of the first major company leaders to embrace sustainability. Her pledge, Performance with Purpose, equated profits with purpose rather than treating them as trade-offs. Many of the company’s goals seem standard today. But fifteen years ago her mission was progressive and trailblazing. She aimed to reduce production and packaging waste and migrate PepsiCo brands towards healthier options, among other initiatives. “I wanted to make sure that PepsiCo was not only delivering top-tier financial returns but doing so in a way that was responsive to the needs of the world around us,” Nooyi said a decade after the pledge’s commencement.
She has since updated her views. In a recent virtual conference she asked: “If 80% of our products are bought by women because they were the gatekeepers at home, or make all the purchases, why don’t we have a large number of women represented in our ranks?”
The Power of Imperfections: Vulnerability as a Leadership Strength
“A vital leadership quality in these extraordinary times is the courage to admit to vulnerability.”
The willingness to say “I don’t know” is a strength. Men are more likely to be conditioned to do the opposite.
Acknowledging weakness can transform it into a strength. In 2008, German virologist Dr. Ijad Madisch struggled to make headway in his research. He had an epiphany. If failures were shared, learnings would be gleaned. The same mistakes would not be repeated. The entire medical research sector would become more streamlined and effective. From his acceptance of vulnerability was born ResearchGate. It now has 20 million members. It has contributed to the collaborative reshaping of scientific and other research. It may also have contributed to the speed with which coronavirus vaccines were developed.
“Doubt is the father of invention,” said Galileo Galilei. There is a case for admitting doubt, for voicing one’s feelings. Like intuition, these are renowned female qualities.
Aggression Versus Consideration: The Cost of Getting It Wrong
Some of the biggest recent corporate disasters have stemmed from aggressive, fast-tracked decisions. BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill and, in South Africa, the R250bn Steinhoff fraud are prime examples. Minimal attention to detail and corporate over-reach drove both. “Greed is good,” says Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, in the 1987 movie Wall Street. Then came the 2008-9 financial crisis, rising inequality and the Occupy Wall Street protest.
“The growing consensus, today, is that capitalism needs to find a gentler, wiser balance.”
“I think we could do a lot…if we had patient, non-speculative capital invested in…productive returns,” said Katrina vanden Heuwel, editor of the progressive US publication Nation, in a 2019 debate.
If business were to heed her by embracing a more patient, feminine approach, corporations would gain greater societal trust. They would also contribute incrementally towards solving some of the world’s major problems.
Nurturing Trust and Power: The Female Leadership Advantage
How should we evaluate trust across the genders? Trust is a function of integrity, authenticity and acceptance of responsibility. A significant dataset and empirical cross-cultural 2019 study provides proof. Women display more integrity than men by a nine percentage point margin.
But women also bring forceful qualities to leadership. They are entitled to do so. Even when women reach the top table, they face more questioning and doubt than men. Kim Foxx, the state attorney in Illinois and a friend of US vice-president Kamala Harris, noted wryly that “There is a celebration of what it means to break the ceiling, and not nearly enough conversation of what the cuts to your head look like.”
The #MeToo movement illustrates how women combine anger with technological and networking intelligence. The massive global coalition against sexual harassment, together with #BlackLivesMatter, which three women founded eight years ago (Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi), has unleashed perhaps the deepest social revolution of the past quarter-century.
“The shift in the acceptance of female rage has been seismic and sudden,” Elizabeth Day writes in How to Fail: Everything I’ve Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong. But she also warns that “we’re in danger of replacing one female archetype – the nurturing accommodator of other people’s needs – with another: the furious avenger who is angry at everything just because she can be.
“For true progress to be made, women need to be allowed to be many different things all at once. The same goes for men.”
Athena was not all gentleness. She persuaded the vengeful Furies to accept a judgement and adopt a protective role for the citizens of Athens. She reminded them she could access Zeus’s thunderbolts. Her clever combination of carrot and stick, benevolent actions and veiled threats, and real power, triumphed.
Thanks for Sharing: How Openness Shapes the Imagination Age
Until fairly recently, imagining business meetings peppered with this phrase would have been difficult.
Women are better at talking about their feelings and thoughts. Sharing is not always appropriate. Sometimes keeping confidences or playing cards close to one’s chest is a prudent strategy. Even a vital one when competitive stakes are high.
However, as we transition from the Information Age and knowledge becomes more easily accessible, the question shifts. It is no longer about what we know. It is about what we do with what we know. The next part of this century brings dematerialisation, intangibles, inclusivity and creativity. It is the Imagination Age. This context suits female attributes better. These include intuition, networking, mutual support and willingness to trust in collaboration and outsourcing.
Thoughtful Leaders: Deep Skills for a New Era
“Not ‘soft skills.’ Instead, deep skills”, writes the economist Jed Kolko.
"Emotional intelligence, curiosity or inquisitiveness, openness, flexibility: the value of these ‘deep’ skills is recognised as prerequisites for the Imagination Age."
These skills are not yet replicable by artificial intelligence. Regardless of gender, we all have the capacity to improve them. But the evidence shows that women have a more natural orientation in these areas. They show an openness to unfamiliar concepts that drives better leadership outcomes.
We Don't Need Another Hero: The New Model of Leadership
Looking for something / We can rely on / There’s gotta be something better out there / Love and compassion / Their day is coming / All else are castles built in the air.
Tina Turner was prescient. The complexities of business will extrapolate. The superhero CEOs of the past remain inspirational. Jack Welch and Steve Jobs demonstrated qualities that are timeless: curiosity, candour, judgement and picking the right people.
But the shift over the last decade is notable. IBM’s 2010 CEO Study already tracked the importance of qualities such as fairness, humility, openness and a focus on sustainability. These were at low ratings, just above 10%. The key attribute for the five years ahead was deemed to be creativity. The 2021 report highlights the paramount need for CEOs to lead with purpose and mission and to engage employees.
Netflix and CEO Reed Hastings point to the importance of both creativity and purpose. Netflix may attribute at least some of its phenomenal success, revenues of $25 billion in 2020, to a strategy of diversity at every level including leadership. Nine of its 22 directors or senior leadership are women. Some occupy the most crucial roles for continuing global expansion. Programming is led by Bela Bajaria as Head of Global TV. Maria Ferreras is the company’s Global Head of Partnerships.
Bajaria has driven a deliberate inclusion lens in production commissioning. She insists on gender equality in lead roles. Women also occupy leadership roles in driving content and regional franchises at Viacom, Disney, Amazon Studios and HBO. Netflix may be a forerunner, but a trend is emerging.
“The streaming giants have realised the importance of content that reflects the people watching it – and that women understand this better than men.”
A Considered Approach: Why Women Make Better Negotiators and Decision-Makers
Are women less likely to grandstand and less prone to groupthink? Women may be better at asking new questions. They flex their thinking rather than trying harder to answer existing questions. In welcoming dissenting voices and handling disputes, they demonstrate greater intuition than men. This makes them better negotiators across a wider stakeholder spectrum. It also helps in validating others and growing their self-belief.
“People thrive in the brightest light and the richest soil.”
“Women,” says Ursula Burns, former CEO of Xerox and the first Black female leader of a Fortune 500 company, “are still largely responsible for the nurturing of their families. It’s part of our genetic structure. That means we take responsibility for nurturing people to feel included, to feel valued.“
The Glass Ceiling Is Cracking: But Far Too Slowly in South Africa
In South Africa, only 6% of JSE-listed companies are led by women. This is up from 3.3% in the financial year 2019. It remains a clear under-representation of women in executive-level leadership positions.
During the first quarter of 2021, women headed only 41 Fortune 500 companies. That is just 8%. The figure has crept up from 24 in 2018 and 33 in 2019.
Progress is happening in other areas. In February 2020, leading investment bank Goldman Sachs announced it would underwrite US and European IPOs only if the company’s board is diverse. Boardroom gender diversity is now mandated for California-domiciled listed companies through the landmark 2018 Women on Boards law. It requires all public company boards to include at least one woman.
The Future: Why Female Leadership Behaviours Will Define the Next Decade
What fundamental challenges will business face in the next decade? Are female leadership behaviours better suited to meeting them? Or are male behavioural strengths, identified particularly in McKinsey’s dimensions of co-ordination, control and external orientation, more suited to the path ahead?
The answer varies marginally between industries and companies. However, common to all businesses is the need to inspire and motivate talent. Organisations must build a culture of knowledge and curiosity. They must widen collaboration towards innovation.
As supply chains evolve to value webs, hierarchies to ecosystems and disruption becomes pervasive, businesses need increasing levels of intuitive creativity, reflexive collaboration and 360-degree agility. Multiple studies confirm these requirements correlate closely to female leadership strengths and behaviours.
Systemic Change Requires Effort: What Organisations Must Do Now
A belief in the primacy of female behaviours does not mean they will gain traction automatically. Work needs doing by everyone alike. Empowerment initiatives, educational programmes, networks, support for social movements and employer programmes that allow for flexibility in recognition of women’s wider roles are all important.
As we better understand the psychology of leadership development, and marry the needs of business today with the demands of all stakeholders, the expectations of what a leader should do and how they should behave will swing further towards Athena.
“By bringing the powers of Athena’s legend to life we will better lead and future proof our organisations.”
Inspirational Women in Female Leadership: Past and Present
“I’m not afraid. I was born to do this,” said Joan of Arc in 1428. She was making her case to France’s crown prince Charles. She requested permission to lead an army to defeat the occupying English forces at Orléans. She had no military training. But she succeeded. History records her as a French heroine, a symbol of unity and freedom. She was 16.
In 2018, Greta Thunberg, aged fifteen, stood outside the Swedish parliament alone with a banner protesting global warming. A year later, she was voted Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
“Two leaders - one fabled in history, one of our present time. Young women. Leaders.”
The hope, and the argument of this blog, is that women like these will soon not stand out as exceptions. At LRMG we are conscious of the urgent need to adopt empowerment, inclusivity and leadership development programmes aimed at women, Black women in particular. Currently, women comprise half our Board and thirteen of our twenty-seven-member senior leadership team.
Female leadership in South Africa matters commercially, culturally and strategically. At LRMG, we actively build leadership development and talent development programmes that advance women into leadership roles and embed inclusive leadership behaviours across organisations. To find out how LRMG can help your organisation develop female leaders and build a more inclusive high-performance culture, contact the team.
Frequently Asked Questions: Female Leadership in South Africa
Why is female leadership important for business performance in South Africa?
Female leadership in South Africa is important for business performance because the evidence consistently shows that organisations with more women in senior roles outperform those without. MSCI’s five-year tracking study found a 10% improvement in Return-on-Equity and 37% improvement in Earnings-per-Share at companies with at least three female directors. McKinsey’s research identifies five of nine key leadership behaviours that women apply more frequently than men. In South Africa, where only 6% of JSE-listed companies are led by women, closing this gap represents a significant and largely untapped performance opportunity.
What are female leadership behaviours and why do they matter?
Female leadership behaviours include relationship-building, nuanced decision-making, vulnerability, long-term thinking, empathy, intuition, deep listening and a willingness to share and collaborate. These behaviours are not exclusive to women, but research shows that women demonstrate them more consistently and more naturally than men. They matter because they address precisely the leadership challenges that modern organisations face: inspiring talent, building trust, navigating complexity and driving innovation in a world that demands greater inclusivity and creativity.
How does gender diversity on boards improve company performance?
Gender diversity on boards improves performance through multiple mechanisms. Diverse boards make better decisions because they draw on a wider range of perspectives and cognitive approaches. They reduce the groupthink that leads to poor risk management. They also signal a broader commitment to diversity throughout the organisation, which correlates with stronger employee engagement and lower turnover. Goldman Sachs now refuses to underwrite IPOs for companies without diverse boards, reflecting the growing commercial consensus that gender diversity is a performance issue, not a compliance one.
What is stopping more women from reaching leadership positions in South Africa?
The barriers to female leadership in South Africa include structural inequalities in education and economic opportunity, unconscious bias in promotion and succession decisions, the double burden of professional and family responsibilities, a lack of visible role models in senior positions and the absence of deliberate development and mentorship programmes for women at middle management level. These barriers require active intervention from organisations, not passive goodwill. Empowerment initiatives, mentorship programmes, flexible working policies and deliberate succession planning for women are all essential components of a meaningful response.
How does LRMG support female leadership development in South Africa?
LRMG supports female leadership development in South Africa through leadership development programmes, talent development solutions and a deliberate commitment to women’s empowerment within its own organisation. Half of LRMG’s board and thirteen of its twenty-seven-member senior leadership team are women. In practice, LRMG helps South African organisations design and implement leadership development programmes that identify, develop and advance women into senior roles while embedding inclusive leadership behaviours across the broader organisation. To find out more, contact the team through our contact page.
