Women in Leadership: We’re Leaning In

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recently wrote her first book, “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.” This was the long-awaited follow up to her TED Talk, “Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders,” where she makes a compelling point—that women considering having families often “leave before they leave,” meaning they check out mentally versus taking on the challenging assignments they may have otherwise opted for in the past. Instead, she encourages women to “lean in” to their organizations, take on those tough assignments, and not to leave before they leave.

I know a lot of women who listened to that TED Talk and felt inspired. “Don’t leave before you leave” has been quoted by women on numerous occasions as they deal with work-life balance issues. And it’s a great directive. Many organizations, however, including Plante Moran, are realizing more and more that we need to meet women halfway—that we, too, need to “lean in.”

While we’ve always prided ourselves on recruiting and retaining talented female staff, about nine months ago, Plante Moran upped the ante and rolled out a new program: Women in Leadership (WIL). Our mission is simple: best in class attraction, retention, development, and advancement of women leaders at Plante Moran. One of our strategies has been to increase the visibility of women leaders internally and externally. Internally, we’ve done that through a series of forums and profiles of female partners and senior managers.

I was recently talking with one female manager, and she remarked on reading one of our female partner profiles. “It’s amazing how much she and I have in common—same hometown, similar family situation—and I just really connected to the things she was saying,” she told me. “One tip she gave was that she combines her personal calendar with her work calendar. As soon as I read that, I thought, ‘That’s a great idea. If my son has a soccer game, I can put it on my work calendar so that staff know I have that commitment. It makes it that much easier to maintain a good work-life balance.’”

It’s that kind of information sharing and support that Plante Moran WIL is all about. Like Sandberg, we’re leaning in so that our future female leaders may lean in as well.

How about you? Have you read Sandberg’s book? What are your thoughts on increasing female leaders in the workplace?