Practical
examples - Equal Opportunities
New ways to female leadership
HK Service DP,
Denmark
In the European Union, women account for just 32% of all
managers. Only 10% of Members of the Boards and 3% of CEOs of larger EU
enterprises are women. Denmark, whose performance in many crucial fields of
gender equality policies is well beyond the EU average, does not show a
similarly advanced track record when it comes to management. Despite high female
participation in the labour market, the country lacks a gender balance when it
comes to senior executive positions. HK, the Trade Union of Commercial and
Clerical Employees that is the lead partner of the EQUAL Development Partnership
(DP) "Management with a personal style," also reflects this gap. Although 75 %
of the union's members are female, except for the two vice presidents, the top
decision-makers are all male.
Reaching for the top
The DP is coordinated by the Copenhagen branch of HK and has forged a
partnership with the Danish Centre for Gender Equality Research and the Centre
for Leadership, both based at Roskilde University. It aims to create a model
that will help women to develop their full potential and to access senior
management positions. The approach takes account of several key points, which
are often used to explain the absence of women in top decision-making levels
within the world of business and enterprise. One is the limited recruitment
pool, as females are also under-represented in middle management and therefore
the DP has committed itself to increase the number of women at this level of the
corporate hierarchy. A recent analysis by the Confederation of Danish Industry
of the difficulties of recruiting women for managerial positions shows that 70%
of female middle managers have no ambitions to move on to higher positions. The
analysis indicates that family obligations are a barrier, but also that
companies give priority to men and, in turn, men give priority to other men.
Another important point concerns the fact that women's assessment of their
competences as managers differs greatly from the views of many of their bosses.
Whilst female executives feel that their most important assets are cooperation
and communication skills and supporting employees to give of their best, the
enterprises state that the most important capacity for an executive are
strategic and visionary skills and the ability to achieve economic results.
"All the talk about women lacking knowledge is proved wrong by US research",
says project manager Tina Waldorff. "These analyses underline that
enterprises with women at the top generate considerably better bottom lines. We
want to raise women's awareness of how to use their competences in a managerial
job and to develop the personal skills they need to build a career. Developing a
personal management style and the vision of a long-term career plan are crucial
elements in this endeavour."
Training and coaching to trigger personal growth
The EQUAL project reached out to women who were holding down positions in
middle management or who were just about to pass the threshold to this level.
The DP covered public and private enterprises and organisations that were based
in and around Copenhagen. The offer met with a huge demand, as the number of
candidates was much higher than the number of places available. Now, in two
schemes with 25 participants each, 50 women are being supported in maximising
their management potential. Group members are mostly between 35 and 45 years of
age and include women from ethnic minority backgrounds. They receive training
that combines sound management skills and tools with knowledge and hands-on
experience of concepts that are much in demand in the business community. The
programme is structured in four modules, each with a theoretical and a practical
component. The women are tackling an ambitious agenda that contains issues such
as:
- Development of personal leadership;
- Development of personal plans, power and perseverance;
- Curriculum Futurum TM - personal planning for the future;
- Value-based management;
- The learning organisation;
- Creativity and innovation;
- Presentation techniques;
- Personal management style;
- Coaching of employees;
- Discussion and facilitation ;
- Team coaching;
- Self coaching;
- Communication skills.
Each participant is assigned a personal coach who supports her in
acquiring, over time, a personal management style based on values, whilst
maintaining her own integrity and aims without being controlled by the
expectations of other people. Flemming Videriksen, who is the owner and head
of "Mastercoaching", a company that specialises in management consulting and
coaching, has designed the EQUAL coaching programme and is acting as a coach
and facilitator in the project. He compares the women to a tennis player who
has everything she needs to become a champion - and still fails to do so.
"Physical and mental competences, all the skills and tricks of the trade,
enough finances. It does not work out", says Flemming, "if there is a lack
of capacity to put it all together and to find a balance. For women managers
the values represented in a company's corporate identity have to link up
with their personal values and their vision of their entire life, not just
the job and the career. To create this kind of equilibrium requires them to
learn self-management and eventually to make changes. However, making
changes is only possible if you are aware of the things that need changing.
So, the first step we undertake in the project is helping participants to
develop awareness."
For Eve Frisenborg, who is a highly qualified financial expert and also has a
background in English language studies, the process of developing more awareness
of both her own and her organisation's values came at a crucial moment. Eve
works at Copenhagen University's Department of Microbiology and Immunology, as a
Finances and ICT Administrator. She had started to work at the university as a
temp, but was asked during her maternity leave to return to a higher, permanent
position. Her current job is quite a challenge, given the on-going changes in
the university system and the introduction of new management tools. "Participating in the project helped me to put things in perspective", she says.
"There is a participative approach in the management of our department and I
appreciate being challenged in my job and I enjoy the autonomy in my work. This
flexibility helps me to honour the values which I have identified for myself: I
need working hours and conditions that allow me to balance my career and family
life."
The coaching process implies that the women assess their entire life situations
including the social and professional environment and their own selves, a
process which is strengthening their self-confidence, self-respect and
self-value. This is not being achieved by lecturing, but by the coach's
persistent questions which lead to insights and to action for change. Networking
and exchanging information with other women reinforces this process. Organising
the network is the responsibility of the women. The mix of reading circles,
worksite visits, structured exchange of experience, discussion and mutual
support plus casual get-togethers is appreciated by all participants. Moreover,
most of them feel this is a good opportunity to practice their planning,
organising and evaluation skills. Learning from each other, transferring
successful approaches and discussing individual progress are important results
of these meetings and everybody is convinced that the networks will continue
after the end of the programme.
Daniela Haakonsson who comes originally from Austria, finds that her involvement
in the EQUAL project is a perfect support for her efforts to build a career.
While working in the Danish Health Administration, she has been studying for a
Masters Degree in human resources management. For her, the biggest benefits of
the course are networking and tools for personal development that have helped
her to clarify her aims and means. "My perspectives have changed", she
explains, "I will give up the job at the Health Authority, I have no career
prospects there. In a couple of weeks I will have my degree. I have to move on.
I don't know in which direction I will go. Everything is up in the air, but it
does not feel scary." Daniela thinks that the EQUAL training and coaching
package was instrumental in her gaining a new focus; she wants to work as a
human resource consultant, supporting companies in using diversity management to
develop the potential of women and ethnic minorities, and thus make a
contribution to tackling the consequences of demographic change.
Commitments in terms of time and money
Participation in the programme is free of charge, but the women's employers
have to make a financial commitment by granting them 28 working days to be spent
on training and coaching sessions during the one and half year life-span of the
project. As in Eve's case where her boss backed her application from the
beginning, most employers could be convinced about the business advantages to be
gained through their employees' participation in the EQUAL project and agreed to
make this investment in personnel development.
The employers' contribution is matched by the women's commitment and
eagerness to make the most of this opportunity. During the first year, Tina
Waldorff recorded a 99% attendance rate with no drop outs at all. The scheme is
structured in modules of five or two days and 10 sessions are dedicated entirely
to coaching. Participants have to set aside extra time for discussions with
their individual coaches. Between the meetings, they also have to cope with a
lot of independent study and "homework". Homework refers to addressing real
problems and challenges at work, whilst using the newly acquired skills and then
reporting back to the group and their coaches. The question "what happened since
the last time" is always the first exercise when the women meet again for
further training and coaching.
An innovative concept for new target groups
Whilst coaching higher and top executives to enhance their performance is not
exactly new, offering this kind of support to women in middle management and
adapting it to their needs is a novel approach. Coaching sessions cost around
150 Euro; a package comparable to the one offered by the EQUAL project would
fetch 3000 Euro on the market. In Denmark, it is rare that enterprises are
prepared to make this kind of investment in employees in middle or lower
management.
Flemming Videriksen is quite sure that the scheme will be successful for both
the participants and the companies involved. "The secret of success", he says, "is the generous timing. EQUAL makes it possible for the women to embark on a
developmental process over 18 months. We will enable them to draw on their own
resources and I am convinced that each participant will set the right objectives
for developing her own personal management style and career." This can be an
enormous boost to achieving a well-planned career move, better reconciliation of
work and private life, a satisfying balance between personal and corporate
values or if this cannot be achieved, a well-considered decision to look for
another job.
The second target group of the project is 13 trade unionists working as
advisors and three shop stewards, all from HK's Copenhagen, North Sealand and
Esbjerg branches. They receive training and practical support to become coaches
and to act as change agents within their organisation. The modular programme is
organised in blocks of two or three days. It covers the basics of coaching and
also teaches counselling skills. Participants are then being placed as
individual coaches of the first target group. Given their career in the trade
union, many of them already have counselling experience but they appreciate the
coaching approach since they perceive it as being clearly more active, as
compared to just giving information and advice to clients. Henny Fiskbaek Jensen
who works as counsellor at HK Esbjerg in Jutland finds the wording of one of the
elementary rules of coaching matches exactly what she she wants to achieve:
"One should always remember that the person who asks for help with a problem
carries the seed for the solution", she says." We have learned to ask the
right questions that will lead the person towards the solution, which includes
helping reflect on their stengths and weaknesses and the so-called 'inner and
outer' things in life, that is their personal values versus an organisation's or
the society's values." Henny finds it very satisfying to enable union
members to resolve conflicts related to promotion and career issues by
developing their capacity to deal pro-actively with the situation. Henny's
involvement in the EQUAL DP has triggered a discussion within HK's Esbjerg
branch on how to promote and disseminate coaching as a tool, not only to support
women's participation in higher management, but also to solve labour conflicts.
Using the expertise of the women trade unionists trained as coaches would also
help to make them more visible and to strengthen their leadership role within
the organisation.
Channeling good practices towards the mainstream
The fact that the DP is training coaches produces a mainstreaming effect
within the HK Trade Union itself and creates a certain peer pressure on other
unions. Good practices and results will be disseminated to all unemployment
insurance funds, which in Denmark are operated by the trade unions. Already, the
public relations strategy of the project has led to intensive press coverage
that, in turn, produced a huge demand from women who sought to secure a coaching
place at HK.
The DP is working on a self-supporting version of the programme that would
certainly facilitate its transfer to, and adoption by, other mainstream
institutions. Besides social partner organisations, the project is targeting
education and training providers such as business schools. Producing a virtual
tool kit that is based on the achievements of EQUAL is expected to reduce the
cost, to facilitate the access of even more women and thus, contribute to
further dissemination and mainstreaming.
Major components of this Danish coaching approach are on their way to becoming
part of the project's transnational partners' mainstreaming strategies. The "I
ME WE (Innovative, Managerial, Entrepreneurial Women in Europe)" Transnational
Partnership links EQUAL DPs in seven countries or regions, Belgium (both the
Dutch and the
French speaking communities),
Spain,
Finland,
France and
Italy. They all share the commitment to promoting female leadership in the
business world. Through two transnational learning and exchange events, the
Danish partner is exporting its good practices to key people in the other
national projects like mentors, coaches, instructors, teachers and advisers.
Tina Waldorff is pleased with the outcomes of the June seminar: "Our coaching
methods were appreciated by the participants. There will be definitely be some
transfer of best practices from Denmark to other countries. Everybody is looking
forward to the next transnational learning seminar in December."
Contact
Ledelse med personlige stil (Management with a Personal Style)
Tina Waldorff
HK Service Kobenhavn
DK-2300 Copenhagen S
Tel.: +45 3330 2444
E-mail: 01twa@hk.dk
Website:
www.ledelse-med-stil.socialfonden.net
Link to EQUAL Database description:
DK-31
All comments and information should be emailed to
empl-equal-etg4@ec.europa.eu 
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