Why we need to Promote for Potential

We know that it’s vital to Change the Language of Leadership and start recognising the qualities of leadership that are most effective – qualities in which women tend to over-index. But there’s another cultural barrier that we need to address too, which is currently preventing many talented women from reaching the leadership positions they’d excel in, and that is to Promote for Potential.

Women currently face a ‘broken first rung’ in the career ladder where despite being equally qualified, fewer women get promoted to first-level manager roles than men. Bias in the criteria we use to promote people is a big contributor to that. 

For instance, studies show that men are more likely to be evaluated based on what they contribute whereas women are more likely to be evaluated according to how amenable they are.

In a recent study by Textio, 88 percent of high-performing women receive feedback on their personality during performance reviews compared with 12 percent of high-performing men. And we all have a tendency to value identical behaviours more highly when we see them in men versus in women. The Les Bleues advert you can see on our Represent Me section is one of the many examples of this, and it happens in interviews and appraisals too.

Find out more about how to Promote for Potential and address these biases that are holding talented, ambitious women back here [link to Playbook for now; and the advice/tips in Playbook 2.0 once done]