Where Women’s Leadership Development Programs Fall Short

The email landed in my inbox during my fifth year in academic medicine. It was an invitation for a women’s leadership development program, forwarded by a male senior leader, who wrote, “You should apply for this!”

In mingled confusion and exasperation, I (Heather) responded audibly, “Another one?!” By that time, I had already attended four leadership development programs and numerous professional development seminars, all designed explicitly for women. The bitter irony? This latest invitation arrived just three months after I received the “Emerging Leader” award from the American Academy of Medical Colleges’ Group on Women in Medicine and Science, a national recognition for leadership training that I was already conducting myself!

Although I understood that the intent of the email was to encourage and support my career aspirations and I appreciated that even seasoned leaders can improve their skills, here was the unintended message:

I — the sole female faculty in my department — certainly must need to work on my leadership skill set. My male colleagues do not.

The demand for and number of women’s leadership development programs (WLDPs) has exploded in recent years. Sometimes embedded in women’s conferences, sometimes executive education, and other times customized for specific companies, these programs offer important opportunities for women to become better equipped for the challenges of senior leadership roles and tackling gender bias and its associated barriers. They have provided safe places for women to share workplace experiences, offering a space for support and for practicing methods to achieve career advancement.

There is strong evidence that WLDPs produce results, including higher promotion rates, higher retention, increased sponsorship, broader networks, increased knowledge and confidence, and better understanding of organizational structure and processes. And they constitute one salient element of gender equity efforts in many organizations. In fact, offering such opportunities is a convenient way for leaders and organizations to publicly demonstrate their commitment to gender diversity in leadership positions.

However, when deployed in the absence of any broader effort to advance women and without accountability from managers and leaders, there can be an insidious dark side to sending women to WLDPs: It can signal that women are deficient and need fixing, or that the underrepresentation of women in senior leadership positions is a result of their inability to compete with men.

There are a few reasons this signaling can happen. First, sending only women to gender-specific leadership programs amplifies gender stereotypes that men have the traditionally valued agentic leader traits, while women do not. On the contrary: McKinsey research reveals that most of the leadership behaviors deemed most effective for addressing future business challenges — inspiration, participative decision-making, setting expectations and rewards, people development, and role modeling — are already exhibited more frequently by women. These approaches to leadership development and transformational leadership styles are a hallmark of WLDPs and more generally referred to as inclusive leadership. In comparison, research shows that historically male-dominated and elite general leadership development programs are focused on individual knowledge, the autonomous self, and traditionally masculine leadership styles of transactional leadership.

We need to change the messaging about leadership programs and who needs them to eliminate leadership deficit messaging to women. There is a fine line between celebrating and empowering talented junior women and fueling imposter feelings about leadership readiness.

Second, these programs can become yet another gender tax for women. Using WLDPs as a fix for systemic gender inequities communicates to women that it is their responsibility to correct the company’s gender imbalance in leadership, and the payoff doesn’t always equal the time commitment. Attending these programs — often requiring women to miss work — demands additional cognitive labor, and many women are reluctant to decline these “opportunities,” fearing it would signal lack of interest in advancement. And let’s not forget, while she is away working on her leadership skills, her male peer is continuing to work on daily tasks, getting face time with the boss, and working on promotion-enhancing projects.

In this way, extra leadership training for women is a new version of office housework and unpaid labor. This is especially taxing if women return to the same old workplace culture without the resourcing, opportunity, sponsorship, and cultural change required to advance.

Finally, there is a risk that sending women to WLDPs becomes a form of superficial or performative allyship. She may have an uplifting experience, feel empowered, and even burnish some new leadership strategies. But these good feelings become an exercise in futility if the organizational leaders who nominated her and funded the program have no real investment when it comes to personal commitment, sponsorship, and accountability for her advancement.

Genuine allyship requires consistent and public advocacy for the advancement of underrepresented groups. It can’t be outsourced. When a talented woman is offered the chance to attend leadership training, make it a requirement that her managers to sponsor her for new — and appropriately compensated — opportunities upon her return. This should include promoting her potential and performance when she’s not in the room, nominating her for stretch assignments, sharing social capital through deliberate networking, publicly supporting women in senior leadership roles, and voicing support for her in promotion decisions. If she’s talented enough to merit leadership preparation, then someone should be held accountable for her ascension to meaningful leadership roles.

Additionally, men must be thoughtfully integrated into WLDPs, so they have the opportunity to listen and learn from their female colleagues. They can then take that knowledge and reflect on how they can collaborate to make the workplace more equitable. For instance, the Simmons School of Business Executive Education’s WLDP is a customized corporate program that includes male senior leaders in two sessions where they work in groups with the women participants to learn about gender dynamics that are creating inequities. Then they collaborate on changes in practices and policies that can have a measurable and sustainable impact on gender equity in their company.

For every woman you send to a leadership development opportunity, pledge to send a proportionate number of men in current leadership roles (depending on your organization’s gender balance) to an inclusive leadership development program, allyship workshop, or cultural humility training for workplace equity to improve their gender intelligence. Increasingly, many excellent conferences for women are inviting men to participate and some offer programming specific to inclusive leadership, cross-gender allyship, mentorship, and workplace collaboration.

Now is the time to double down on meaningful commitment to the advancement of women that must include genuine opportunity for and commitment to their success as a leader. WLDPs can have significant value, but companies must use these programs as an opportunity to assess and improve the workplace itself. McKinsey’s study of its own Remarkable Women Program concluded that “these leadership programs can be powerful and empowering, but only if participating companies use them to hold a mirror up to themselves and the way they function.”