The new research of the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business at London Business School was published yesterday.The press release it below and the full report can be downloaded in the next couple of days here.
PROFESSIONAL TEAMS AT INNOVATIVE OPTIMUM WHEN MADE UP OF 50% MEN AND 50% WOMEN:
NEW RESEARCH FINDS MEN AND WOMEN REMARKABLY SIMILAR IN PROFESSIONAL ATTITUDES AND ASPIRATIONS
Men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus. They are all from Earth, and are able to work much more effectively and innovatively together in teams than previously thought. However, the differences between them appear to be the contextual influences on their lives and this can affect their progress as team leaders and team members.
New research looking into the gender differences in composition and leadership of teams, and the impact of their composition on innovation, was published today by the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business at London Business School.
‘Innovative Potential: Men and Women in Teams’ surveyed more than 100 teams of knowledge workers working for 21 cross-sector companies across 17 countries, and analysed the data at team level and at individual team member level[1].
KEY FINDINGS:
- Team composition
‘Teams can be more innovative when they are made up of 50:50 even proportions of men and women’ says Professor Lynda Gratton, Academic Lead of the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business at London Business School. The results demonstrate that optimal conditions for innovation are more likely to occur if the team benefits from group dynamics engendered when the team has even proportions of men and women.
At the team level, the key drivers of innovation (experimentation, knowledge transfer, task performance and efficiency) stem from high team ratings for boundary spanning, a psychological safe communication climate and self-confidence. All these factors rated at their optimal levels with teams of approximately 50:50 proportions of men and women, regardless of whether the team leader is a man or a woman, with little difference in behaviour evident at an individual level in the broad selection of criteria studied.
- Team performance
‘Naturally, there are other influencing factors to consider. It’s a complex area’, says Professor Gratton. ‘We looked in detail, for example, at team member context and how that might influence behaviour at an individual level and possibly impact the performance of their team’.
Gender differences can be a factor on innovative performance. Here the context in which team members work is fundamentally important. A number of factors can, in certain circumstances, hinder the performance of the team, including:
· Spillover from home - Whereas team members tend to consider home more important and generally experience a positive Spillover to create an “enriching cycle” between home and work, team leaders appear to behave differently. Most team leaders identify work as more important than home and experience negative Spillover from home to work.
· Men team leaders in particular show a strong ‘”depleting cycle” between home and work.
· Domestic burden - Women carry most of the domestic burden, according to the findings. Women team members are four times more likely to do most of the domestic labour at home than their male counterparts.
- Leading teams
These findings have implications when thinking about women as leaders. They show that:
- Spillover – The results also show that 52% of women in leadership positions do not have children. There is a strong suggestion of an impact on work/life balance to achieve their professional goals, especially when the comparative statistics are that only 4% of men team leaders do not have children.
- Domestic burden - Women team leaders are six times more likely to carry the domestic burden than men team leaders.
These findings re-enforce previous research by the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business at London Business School, which found that a minority of organisations were actively and adequately preparing women for senior roles[2].
RECOMMENDATIONS
Professor Gratton recommends that organisations should address these issues by:
- Encouraging shared domestic labour – by offering and reinforcing ‘family friendly’ policies and practices
- Actively managing ‘Spillover’ – by reducing the pressure to adapt, to work under pressure and to work long hours; and by encouraging open dialogue, enabling family friendly policies (as much as for men as women) and encouraging male role models
- Managing and minimising the ‘Minority Experience’ in teams – ‘Companies and recruiters building professional teams must work harder to find the right skill sets needed to fulfil their team requirements, whilst aiming for the 50:50 guideline for gender composition’ advises Professor Gratton
- Opitimising teams’ innovative potential – by considering gender diversity; boundary spanning capability and psychological safety when constructing teams.
FORUM:
The research findings will be presented for the first time at a public Forum at London Business School on Thursday 1 November. Invited guests will include senior executives from Google, IBM Consulting, American Express and Lehman Brothers. Katherine Garret-Cox, Chief Investment Officer of Alliance Trust, will be giving the key note address followed by a presentation of the research findings by Professor Lynda Gratton.
The Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business is leading the debate on the emerging
themes for women in business, creating a dynamic interface between academic thought leadership and practice. One of the Centre’s key aspirations is to support and encourage the corporate sector and its senior executives to realise the potential of women by motivating companies to inspire women. A shared understanding of the actions senior executives in European companies are currently taking is a critical step in developing truly inspirational places to work, for women and men.
For more information or to register as press for the Forum, please contact the press office directly.
Kate Watkins
Media Relations Manager
London Business School
+44 (0)20 7000 7251
kwatkins@london.edu
Monica Fiumara
PR Officer
London Business School
+44 (0)20 7000 7252
mfiumara@london.edu
Mark Lane
Corporate Communications
Lehman Brothers International (Europe)
+44 (0)20 7102 1756
Mark.lane@lehman.com
NOTES TO EDITORS
Lynda Gratton, Executive Director, Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business
Dr Lynda Gratton is professor of management practice at London Business School and is founding director of the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business. She is acknowledged as one of the world’s leading thinkers on business strategy and people management and advises companies across the world. Her most recent book is Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces, and Organisations Buzz with Energy - and Others Don’t. She is also the author of Living Strategy: Putting People at the Heart of Corporate Purpose, published in 2000, which was voted one of the 20 most influential books by American CEOs. http://www.london.edu/womeninbusiness.html
London Business School
London Business School’s Vision is to be the pre-eminent global business school, nurturing talent and advancing knowledge in a multi-national, multicultural environment. Founded in 1965, the School graduated over 800 MBAs, Executive MBAs, Masters in Finance, Sloan Fellows and PhDs from over 70 countries last year. The School’s executive education department serves over 6,000 executives on its programmes every year. London Business School is based in the most accessible and international city in the world and is one of only two UK business schools to have twice been awarded the highest research rating of five-star (5*), by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), confirming the School as a centre of world-class research in business and management. The School’s website is at www.london.edu
Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers, an innovator in global finance, serves the financial needs of corporations, governments and municipalities, institutional clients, and high net worth individuals worldwide. Founded in 1850, Lehman Brothers maintains leadership positions in equity and fixed income sales, trading and research, investment banking, private investment management, asset management and private equity. The Firm is headquartered in New York, with regional headquarters in London and Tokyo, and operates in a network of offices around the world. Lehman Brothers seeks to support innovative not-for-profit organisations that work to advance quality healthcare, promote excellence in the arts and culture, educate and help meet the needs of underprivileged children and youth. For further information about Lehman Brothers’ services, products and recruitment opportunities, visit the Firm’s Website at www.lehman.com.
[1] The sample consisted of a wide variety of teams, from all male teams to all female teams and varying proportions of composition in between. The teams worked in different disciplines and functions within their organisations. We surveyed representative samples of teams from leadership executives, research and development, finance and accounting, legal, information technology, human resources and marketing.
The companies studied were: Accenture, AIB, AXA Ireland, AXA PPP, BDO Stoy Hayward, Cargill, Corning, Fortis Bank, GSK Biologicals, IBM Consulting, KPMG, L’Oreal, Lehman Brothers, Lloyds Corporate Banking, London Business School, Nortel, Orange, Reuters, Société Générale, Symantec, Volvo Cars.
[2] “Inspiring Women: Corporate Best Practice in Europe”, Professor Lynda Gratton, Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business at London Business School, May 2007
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