The route to achieving greater diversity of board skills

“There should be more women on boards not as a gender parity issue, but rather as a skill-set requirement to ensure the businesses of tomorrow create sustainable change and growth.”

What leadership traits are needed on boards?

Have you seen the December 2019 McKinsey report “When women lead, workplaces should listen”? It concludes that women exhibit leadership traits that are highly applicable to future global challenges.  Whilst men mainly exhibit the traditional leadership traits of command and control and individualistic decision-making, it is women who mainly exhibit leadership traits necessary to lead through transformational change. Growth traits such as inspiration, participative decision-making, people development and role modelling.

In short, board diversity has to change not as a nice to have but rather as a commercial reality.