Public speaking and championing women in the board room

It is always a rather heart-stopping moment when you arrive at an official function as a diplomat and find you’re billed as a key note guest speaker with no prepared speech to deliver.

It happened to me a week into my first African posting in Swaziland.

I turned up at a rural event to discover that I had been given the honour of delivering the 20 minute key note address in the presence of the Foreign Minister but that no one had notified me about it. The pressure was increased by the arrival of the kingdom’s state television broadcaster which had been invited to capture my sage utterings.

Luckily, my rapidly scribbled words were elongated as each sentence had to be translated into Swazi for the audience to understand, cutting down the content to 10 minutes – but it seemed an awfully long time at the time. I was caught out again last week on my arrival at the annual Women’s Summit gala dinner in Windhoek. I had been invited to participate in a number of capacities over the four day programme and had accepted half as I was busy working on Olympic outreach work. The theme of this year’s summit was “The Time is Now!”

By the gala dinner evening I was looking forward to relaxing after a particularly busy day in the office. That was until my Spanish colleague congratulated me on being the star turn at the following morning’s breakfast session addressing the conference of several hundred women (somewhat ironically) on “well prepared women in leadership: advice on how to get more women into the board room”.

I ended up wrapping up my meal rather quickly and by 9pm was rushing home to start researching and writing a speech on a subject that I believe strongly should be debated actively and addressed both in this region and more widely.

It ended up being a fun project to tackle, albeit with less time to do research than I would normally like. My web-gathered evidence showed that having women in higher level leadership positions significantly improve financial performance. Having a better balance of women in top leadership positions can mean a more diverse team of leaders with different perspectives and a greater ability to contribute new ideas. Women are typically more inclusive leaders, encourage more debate and teamwork, and are more adept at multi-skilling.

The message is clear: women mean business. Organisations with more women in leadership roles outperform their competition. In today’s constantly changing and competitive landscape, having high-quality leadership talent has never been more critical.

So – in light of the fact that the conference’s theme was “the time is now” – I offered some advice to delegates on what they could do about it.

To the employers:

• optimise your female talent – and be prepared to help them
• recruit women: get them in the door.
• develop women: cultivate the female talent you have on board and help them realise their full potential. Act as mentors, create networks and help your sisters market themselves as effectively and ruthlessly as men do.
• Support women: create a culture that is merit-based and watch women rise to the top. Do this and your organisation will not only stand a better chance of retaining the next generation’s top talent, but will also reap the benefits of a more diverse group of high calibre leaders to drive your business.

To female employees:

• prepare yourself. Extend your forward planning. You have a lot of juggle, particularly if you are a working mother, but don’t let this overwhelm you. Predict and think round problems and set up coping mechanisms.
• Prioritise ruthlessly, delegate and make sure you keep asking yourself regularly why you are doing tasks – and discard them if necessary.
• Be better prepared in meetings than your colleagues, male or female. It shows – and impresses people.
• Try and strike good balances between good vs best – and proactive vs reactive time.
• Focus on your career priorities and your own PR.
• Build and use networks like this.

None of this is easy and I hope no one said it would be.

My conclusion was that both women employers and employees need to be prepared to step up and seize the many opportunities that exist out there and make sure that the organisations that they chose to be associated with take advantage of the benefits of diversity and see its fruits.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has done a lot of work in this area and I am proud to be a member of a diplomatic service that now has 32 female heads of mission (Ambassadors and High Commissioners) – almost a fifth of our total.

If you would like to read more about the session, the full speech is available here on our UKinNamibia website.

I was delighted to get good feedback from both Namibian and regional delegates after its delivery and would encourage more debate on this important topic on our UK in Namibia Facebook page and more widely. Let me know your thoughts, particularly in a local context. I look forward to hearing from you.