By Monica C. Meinert
Women make up more than half the total number of employees working in the banking industry today, but the share of women who currently hold the CEO title is currently hovering around a mere 7.5 percent.
A lack of diversity at the highest levels of a banking organization might mean missed opportunities, notes Jenn Docherty, CEO of Bank On Women, which is dedicated to educating the community banking industry on the importance of adding qualified women to their boards and c-suites and promoting women leaders in community banking.
“If we don’t have leadership teams that reflect our communities, we’re not able to access markets effectively,” she explained during a panel at the American Bankers Association Women and Allies Forum in March.
Women today make up a majority of the educated workforce in the U.S., comprise 50 percent of all stockholders, start businesses at a rate twice that of men, and are the primary breadwinners in about 45 percent of U.S. households, according to Docherty. And a majority of them (about 73 percent), she adds, are unhappy with their financial services. That signals a real market opportunity—and banks with greater diversity in their ranks may find themselves better positioned to understand and capitalize on it.
There have been numerous studies conducted around the idea that companies with greater leadership diversity are more innovative and more profitable. After all, as Docherty notes, “you’ve got to have different voices in the room in order to think differently.”
The question, then, is: How do banks get those different voices into the room?
A genuine commitment
Commitment to diversity starts with the bank’s board of directors, says Mary Kay Bates, who today is CEO of Bank Midwest, which serves markets in Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota.
Bates recalls how, earlier in her career, she actually left the bank for a short time after running into some “dead ends” as she worked to advance. But she was recruited back some time later, when a new leader came in with a specific goal of getting more women into leadership positions. “He said … ‘I want you to come back and help me do that,’” Bates recalls. They started by developing a board that maintained an equal balance between men and women—a practice they continue today.
In Bates’ view, having that support from the board is critical for women to advance into the C-suite. “In terms of becoming a CEO, the board makes the final decision,” she says. “So, you need a board that believes in a woman CEO, as well as your predecessor.”
That was the case for Tyler Clinch, who found a mentor and advocate in her former CEO. Clinch began her career at First Community Bank of East Tennessee as CFO, and at the time was new to the banking industry. “My CEO taught me so much, [and] when he was ready to retire, he told the board ‘You need to promote Tyler.’ It was a seamless transition.”
Understanding differences
As bank leadership teams work to increase diversity in the ranks, Clinch adds that “it’s very important to think about the path women take as they’re progressing in the institution,” acknowledging that there are differences between men and women that can affect how they are perceived by others in the workplace, and in turn, their advancement potential.
“We know women are dedicated, analytical, very competent,” she says. “But [women] need to be able to demonstrate that definitively,” especially in their communication. One verbal flag she’s noticed that can unintentionally undermine a woman’s credibility is “upspeak”—the tendency to upwardly inflect the end of a sentence, making it sound more like a question than a declarative statement. It can be an unintended signal to others of a lack of confidence—even when that isn’t the case, she notes.
Clinch adds, however, that “women do walk a fine line in terms of how we are perceived culturally between being accommodative, nurturing and inclusive, and being assertive and competent.” She recalls being called out as “too aggressive” earlier in her career—a label all-too-commonly bestowed on ambitious women, as Lisa Oliver, chair, president and CEO of The Cooperative Bank of Cape Cod, points out.
Reflecting on her own career journey, Oliver says she made the conscious effort to examine her own communication style and parse out the difference between sounding “aggressive” and sounding “competent.” This reflection led her to realize that her own communication style was coming across “like I’m preaching.” Today, she embraces a different style—one that invites dialogue. “If I can change the way I speak and be confident in what I’m saying, and believe in my point, but express it in a way that invites dialogue, it’s perceived completely differently,” she says.
Bridging the ‘confidence gap’
Then there’s also the phenomenon that Docherty refers to as the “confidence gap” between men and women. Studies have shown that women tend to consistently underestimate their abilities, while men overestimate their abilities. (It’s this confidence gap that will lead men to apply to jobs for which they feel they meet just 30 to 40 percent of the qualifications, while women tend to not apply for jobs unless they meet around 90 percent of the qualifications.)
The confidence gap really is “a way that men and women tend to go through the world,” Docherty explains. “In addition, men tend to get promoted on the likelihood of success. Women tend to get promoted based on a ‘prove it’ mentality.”
Men also tend to be steered toward profit and loss roles, “which clearly are a path to the C-suite,” at a rate about three times that of women. “So be careful that you don’t segue women into HR or back office and men into client-facing roles,” she cautions. “Make sure you’re promoting on the same criteria across the board.”
That’s why sponsorship and allyship can play critical roles for helping women advance in their careers. “It’s really important as we see talent in our organizations to say, ‘I see something in you, I’m going to use my political capital for you,’” Docherty says.
Bates shares her own experience with the confidence gap. “When I was asked to be CEO of our company, it took me two years. My first response was ‘I’m not ready,’” she says. “They could have moved on and put someone else in the role, but fortunately they didn’t.” She encourages aspiring leaders to “take the risk, have the courage to say yes” to opportunities when they arise.
Words of wisdom from women in banking
Women leaders share their advice for aspiring women in the banking industry:
- “Take ownership of your own development. No one cares more about you than you!”—Mary Kay Bates, president and CEO, Bank Midwest.
- “If women see a job they’re interested in, and they have the basic level skill set, and they want the job, they should apply for it!”—Tyler Clinch, CEO, First Community Bank of East Tennessee.
- “What women need to get better at is learning how to fail. There’s no such thing as perfection. Women get in their own way of feeling they need to be perfect!”—Lisa Oliver, chair, president and CEO, The Cooperative Bank of Cape Cod.
- “Just say to yourself: ‘What is the worst thing that could happen,’ if you ask for a raise and they say no, or you ask for a promotion, they say no? It’s just a no, which means you can try something different next time. And if you keep asking and the answer is ’no,’ you may not be where you should be. You may be in the wrong role, you may be in the wrong organization. It may not be a fit for what you’re looking for.”—Sarah Long, president and CEO, Delaware Bankers Association.
