Equality is key to attracting women to leadership positions

Experts in the aged care sector have acknowledged the need to foster opportunities for women in leadership roles to establish a well-rounded and robust cohort of leaders in businesses and on organisation boards, but the buck doesn’t stop with women. 

When considering how to get more women into leadership roles in your organisation, it’s normal to think elements need to be tailored to women, but in fact, the answer is equality.

Providing the same opportunities across the board and removing the hurdles that are often in a woman’s way to take up a leadership role, means everyone – male or female – can thrive and meet their full potential.  

Offering a role that has a flexible work environment with a more empathetic and compassionate leadership approach is crucial for women, said Karen Taylor, CEO of Women & Leadership Australia.

Considering when and where people work in the current age and offering these types of arrangements allows women and men the chance to take on childcare roles outside of work while also juggling career growth – drawing away from the stereotype that childcare and parenting are “women’s issues”. 

“Instead of making parenting and childcare just a women’s issue in leadership, it actually should be extended to men too and organisations should encourage them to take on parental responsibilities because that will then allow women more freedom to take up leadership roles,” Ms Taylor explained. 

Ditching the “work-life balance” model

Denouncing the term “work-life balance”, Ms Taylor added that most female leaders she knows cannot separate their life like that.

“[Women] see that they’ve got seven days in a week and have a range of responsibilities and work is one of them, so they want the flexibility to accomplish all of their responsibilities across those seven days,” she said. 

“We should get rid of the notion of a “work-life balance” and see a person in totality, their whole life and how work fits into that.”

Organisations should be looking at female leaders in totality to offer flexibility to those who may not be able to cramp into the standard 9am-5pm day period.

Company values should match staff

Women often look at the values and behaviours of an organisation when considering a leadership role and want them to be in line with their own, particularly around the type of leadership jobs they would potentially be vying for.

Women are interested in a balance of accountability leadership with a compassionate and empathetic approach that reflects a positive work culture and space for a variation of thinking types.

Columbia Aged Care Services CEO, Lucy O’Flaherty, agreed, adding the right organisation with the right company board full of a variety of diverse thinking can foster a better outcome for the company and boost confidence in female leaders when they feel listened to.

“Diverse thinking enables you to be challenged and pushes you,” Ms O’Flaherty said.

“For me, that values alignment is about being a business and providing care and services in the very best way we can, but it’s not just driven by profit. 

“It’s getting that balance of commercial and the community.”

If you are able to position yourself as an employer that actively works towards meeting its ethos and values, this will put you in a better position when searching for prospective female leaders.

Abolishing the ‘boys club’

Having a company board of mixed-gendered leaders can allow problems and strategies to be tackled with a broad perspective and allows for robust conversations, an area that was formerly monopolised by men. 

Ms O’Flaherty said she had experienced the ‘boys club’ in a company board setting before, and noticed because of the larger portion of men, it became a group-think – where the decision-making would often be influenced by what those numbers were thinking. 

But she believes it isn’t just the responsibility of a company to provide more opportunities specifically for women, noting a certain level of self-confidence and drive needed to come from the women themselves. 

“Boards can support the whole workforce by paying attention to where people want to be, their aspirations and what learning opportunities might be useful to them but not all women are confident to put themselves forward,” Ms O’Flaherty explained.

“You have to have a level of self-actualisation, self-esteem and self-worth.

“If you can develop that sense of self through lessons learnt, mistakes made, and how quickly you bounced back, that is what allows you to be noticed and rewarded in most cases.” 

Ms O’Flaherty emphasised the need to turn towards a more “contemporary” way of leadership, where executive boards strive to identify upskilling opportunities for staff to keep them in the aged care sector and give them a sense of career satisfaction.

“For some of the women we make those opportunities for, they wouldn’t have said anything if we hadn’t asked,” she said.

Becoming a successful leader

Are you a woman looking to establish yourself as a leader? Here are Ms O’Flaherty’s top three tips for rising to the top. 

To become a leader, you must have:

• Humility: Understand yourself, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and embrace those weaknesses as opportunities to learn and develop. 
• Awareness: Don’t go into any role with assumptions and be open to not knowing. You need to know what you don’t know to fill in the gaps. 
• Self-confidence: Not being aggressive or assertive, but having quiet confidence can reassure other staff members. If you are not confident in yourself, that will be transferred to other team members. 

Having formerly been the CEO of Glenview Aged Care in Tasmania for ten years, Ms O’Flaherty has always believed leadership is not just a job title – it’s a way of being, seeing what other people can’t see and inspiring and motivating staff. 

Having been in the aged care sector for almost three decades, she recognises the advantage of working with older people who can pass on valuable advice, as well as working with a supportive executive board.

“If I don’t want to sit at the computer, I can go and wander out into the facility and interact with our elders who have amazing life stories, some of them have done my job in the past so I get to ask for their counsel and how they dealt with certain things,” said Ms O’Flaherty.

“There are not many industries where you get to do that.” 

A new way of thinking

As the world changes and new situations arise in aged care, leaders may need to adapt and consider innovative solutions, like allowing two people to share the role of CEO to offer leaders more flexibility and an opportunity to maintain obligations outside of work. 

Ms Taylor has seen examples of organisations allowing two women to share the CEO role. 

“They’re young women and are both at a stage in their life where they’ve got children in primary school and really want to continue to work, but want to be able to participate in their children’s lives, so they job share the CEO role,” she explained. 

“If you’ve got the right two people and they can work really well together, there’s no reason why that can’t be an option.” 

While women have formerly been brushed aside when applying for leadership roles, the answer is not to swing too far the other way. 

Creating a diverse executive board, refining leadership to show a more compassionate and empathetic approach, and allowing flexible work environments for all is the key to giving more career opportunities to women without them having to sacrifice aspects of their personal lives on the way to the top.