Anne McElvoy: Women execs shouldn’t have to act like a man

Broadcasters fret about women’s voices rising, a lot more than they worry about chaps talking over each other
Girl power: Dido Harding, the Chief Executive of the TalkTalk Group
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How do we build a modern female executive? One of those management tomes that we get sent at The Economist has caught my eye, promising to make us all more fit for corporate purpose. Advice included “do not wear dangly jewellery and keep make-up discreet”, delivered in the sort of tone Don Draper would have used during Peggy’s first week at work in the Mad Men tower.

There were reasonable tips on self-presentation and getting to the point without losing empathy. But I was struck by the number of dos and don’ts the corporate world wanted to dole out to female aspirants, from appearance (should be unremarkable) to being told not to mistake passionate delivery for gabbling.

A lot of these nostrums go unquestioned. Broadcasters tend to fret about women’s voices rising when they are animated, a lot more than they worry about chaps talking over each other, although both squawking and over-talking are equally displeasing. And the message of my latest reading on how to conquer C-suite seemed largely designed to inform women that to get on in their companies they should be a lot less like the person they started out being.

Some of this is reasonable professional development. People who find communication in a big room hard can be given some easily digestible tips on how to package information more neatly. Those who find delivering bad news stressful can be trained in better ways to do so, or to work out what is really wrong and deal with it. Companies looking to increase their female “pipeline” — a ghastly bit of jargon which makes the ambitious female workforce sound like something they do in fracking — will also have to accept that when they have run out of Identikit females in navy-blue suits to consider for promotion, they might have to think more broadly. And so will head- hunters seeking more women for non-exec roles, once they have exhausted the supply of female accountants.

I would like to think that the efforts of the 30% Club in the City and other outfits striving to give women a fair shot in the workplace are moving us from the days when CEOs and chairmen wondered why a woman couldn’t be more like a man — but possibly not fast enough.

Some of these ungrateful thoughts hovered as I listened to a panel at the Fortune magazine conference this month, taking questions on how to climb the greasy pole. Rona Fairhead, one of the more open of the women who have held positions on major boards (the FT and PepsiCo) urged women to use their networks more and keep in touch with previous bosses (assuming you could stand them and vice-versa). I liked her bracing advice as a former CFO that getting even a small amount of financial experience was better than none, even if it’s just a good evening class to help read a balance sheet.

We can all change and refine what we offer and thriving in careers in a more changeable world demands that we do. But the woman who held the gathering of alpha females in rapt attention was the finance minister of Nigeria, who described how she is reforming one of the world’s most corrupt economies. She laughed and shouted, wearing a purple and yellow outfit and as much jewellery as she could muster, while having command of her brief. A model to us all.

Twitter: @annemcelvoy

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