We were facilitating report outs at a strategy planning workshop after multiple teams tackled developing high-level plans to improve various employee challenges in a relatively high-performing company. Chuck Dymer, who was co-facilitating the client workshop with me, remarked at the depth and importance of several of the report outs and the conversations they sparked.

Why were these report outs different than others we'd done previously?

Four of the five report outs in this strategy planning workshop were delivered by female leaders in the organization.

Rather than looking at the report outs as perfunctory assignments, the female leaders used the platform to share hopes, concerns, frustrations, and possibilities important to them and to the organization. And once they did, the men in the group jumped in to these powerful conversations.

If you're in charge of a company or a significant business unit or department, are you actively managing gender diversity? Are you making sure women are in leadership positions where they can voice things that need to be said that male leaders are unwilling to say?

These questions are real.

And for the too many client strategy planning workshops we facilitate (especially in business-to-business settings) where all the participants are male, these questions about female leaders are of supreme importance.

What are your answers to the questions, and what are you doing to improve the situation right away? – Mike Brown

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