The 100 Women @ Davos Leadership Dialogues offered fresh perspectives on leadership post pandemic. Anino Emuwa outlines some of the key messages
The 100 Women @ Davos Leadership Dialogues earlier this year brought together 15 thought leaders, and change makers from business, academia, government and civil society to provide fresh perspectives on leadership post pandemic.
At the event which had almost 900 registered participants including CEOs, chairs, corporate leaders and founders, speakers discussed ideas, debated solutions and shared innovative models and initiatives to advance inclusive and sustainable leadership.
Overview
Some of the cutting-edge ideas discussed related to
- How to accelerate diversity in leadership
- Characteristics of successful leadership post pandemic
- The role of policy makers
- Social innovation and impact investing
- Closing technology gaps New models to drive access to funding for female entrepreneurship
- Collaboration and commitment to change on the part of stakeholders and leaders
Advancing gender balanced leadership
Opening the leadership dialogues, I remarked that the world is still celebrating firsts for women leadership yet research has shown that gender diversity improves outcomes for economies, societies and businesses.
This was recently demonstrated with governments led by women performing significantly better in dealing with the pandemic in the early stages.
Ambassador Erthartin Cousin added that ‘inclusive leadership isn’t about grand gestures but regular smaller scale commitments, comments and actions’, noting that inclusive leadership is not just about hiring more women, but it is also about empowering them through their careers and providing promotion opportunities and pathways to leadership.
Characteristics of inclusive leadership
Empathy has been demonstrated as a leading characteristic of successful leadership in today’s world observed Talimka Yordanova, CEO, Global Citizen Forum. Some of the characteristics of inclusive leadership shared were: humility, awareness of biases, curiosity about others, cultural intelligence leading to effective collaborations. In discussing practical ways global leaders can become intentional about inclusion and sustainability, Sylvana Koch-Merin, President and Founder, Women Political Leaders, pointed out that the Reykjavik Forum recently launched the Reykjavik Manual, a guide for leaders towards the UN Sustainable development goals, to help them to build back better to a more resilient society where women in leadership is not the exception.
The role of government
The government’s role in leading change was also evoked in discussing how to address the gender gap in technology with the global lockdown underscoring the requirement for universal access to digital technology.Elizabeth Moreno, France’s Minister for Gender Equality, Diversity and Equal Opportunities, highlighted challenges within education systems and the need to overcome institutionalised biases against girls. She spoke of her work with the French Education Minister to improve funding for science and technology courses for girls.
Social innovators and social entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurs, creators of innovative ideas designed to address social issues, occupy an important space, being neither political nor purely commercially motivated. Actively encouraging public or private sector partnership with social innovators, to scale up their ideas can help drive the change we want to see in society.
The pandemic has accelerated interest from millennials and social investors in funds that target issues such as health, social and climate issues. Studies report a spike in capital committed to impact funds. Many of such funds are run by women and have investments targeted at sectors that support female entrepreneurship and target inclusive, under-represented populations.
Funding female entrepreneurship
Unequal access to funding is one of the major barriers to female entrepreneurship with female-led ventures attracting less than 6% of global VC finding. Overcoming biases in the industry were discussed as well as new models and programs for funding female entrepreneurs.
Visibility is critical for women to access funding to help them better connect to prospective investors. Building digital public directories and portals for investors to find women-led ventures will also provide more opportunities for women to connect to funding avenues suggested Amanda Pullinger, CEO, 100 Women in Finance
SheEO founder Vicki Saunders, has created an ecosystem which brings together women investors supporting women ventures with an ESG or social impact. With ESG and impact investing now becoming mainstream, this is one of the most compelling trends that could move the needle considerably, so a stronger focus should be on showcasing social issues women are addressing that will capture the interest of investors looking to make their capital work for good.
Mike Edelhart, Managing Partner, Social Starts and Joyance Partners, said business models based on openness and start-ups who succeed are those who adapt best; they found that female founders are more naturally accepting of change and embrace it and are generally more transparent. Currently 35% of Joyance funds are invested in female founded firms and that building a diverse leadership team has contribute to this outcome
Investing in women
Gender smart investing is important for sustainable leadership because research shows the positive gains of such perspectives and that gender diverse teams make more profitable investments according to Eve Ellis, Wealth Advisor, VP, William Blair. Yet women of colour still have relatively little presence in the corporate world, and we need to see more done to move the needle in boardrooms. The greater the presence of women in executive teams, the more employees feel valued and motivated, and encourage investors to support and invest in companies in which employees are more diverse and feel included. Teams with more diversity tend to be more results driven and value based. This led (their firm) to introduce new portfolios with gender party and gender-lens focus.
She believes leaders must be forward looking, embrace prospect from the pandemic and look for opportunities to effect positive changes, and predicts that the most effective leaders will be those that can rethink, reset and prioritise social wellbeing and in closing reminded us that sustaining change is often achievable with community efforts – succeeding takes a village.
Rethinking economic system of governance
Capitalism which has become the predominant economic system round the world powering economic growth over the last 25 years, has come under scrutiny recently. At the same time as creating enormous wealth, critics accuse capitalism of fuelling inequalities and income disparities, as well as environmental damage e.g. pollution and green-house gases. Dr Eisler argues that capitalism and socialism- often considered as alternative economic systems, are out-dated models relying on dominance, and called for a more cooperative inclusive system of economic governance instead which she calls called ‘Partnerism’. Where GDP calculations have left out women’s traditional contribution in the home as well as caregiver work, partnerist economics provides a more cooperative model which supports caring for ourselves, others and the planet, particularly for the benefit of future generations
Collaborative leadership
Richard Burrett, Chief Sustainability Officer, Earth Capital, Fellow University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, believes leaders who can reach out and build effective collaborations will be most successful. He says that the current paradigm is failing and unsustainable and there is an urgent need to address systemic issues, and advocates that leaders adopt an active mindset to innovate and pioneer change. He cautions that leaders must be informed on dangers we face, plan consciously for the future they want to see, and align strategies and business modules well in advance to address problems for a sustainable, fairer future.
Anino Emuwa is Founder and Managing Director of Avandis Consulting, a strategy and financial advisory firm in France. A former corporate banker with Citibank, she is a also a non-executive director, sitting on several boards including the Board of Governors of Nottingham Trent University.
Anino is a diversity and inclusion advocate; she is a member of the Institute of Directors’ Expert Advisory Group on Diversity and Inclusion and a member of the global advisory Board of UK’s 20-first, a gender balance consultancy firm.
