Paving the way for more women partners

By Fiona Czerniawska

Consulting firms have made huge efforts over the last decade to increase the proportion of women in their businesses. By the standards of most industries they’ve been highly successful, but there’s still a big disparity between men and women when we look at the top of most firms.

That disparity matters for two commercial reasons – I’m putting to one side the obvious one about fairness. The first is that clients would like to see not only more women consultants on projects (they say they get a better quality of solution when they do), but more women running projects. 80% of clients think that a project that’s run by a woman is likely to be completed on time and budget; 75% say that women are more upfront about what needs to be done and why; 58% say they’re more straight forward than men and are more prepared to spend ‘quality time’ with their clients and teams. The second is that women attract women: if you want to pull a greater proportion of women through the management ranks, especially during the years when they’re likely to be juggling busy homes alongside work, then one of the most helpful things you can do is have more projects and practices run by women. Women will gravitate towards them, looking for and usually finding, a supportive, sympathetic group of colleagues, most of whom are in the same position.

So how do we get more women at the top? If I were Norwegian (or, it seems, German), I’d be very tempted to use the Q word. Quotas are very divisive (literally and metaphorically), but they’re probably the only organisational mechanism that accelerates this kind of change. But what if we don’t want to take that leap? What are the alternatives?

We recently teamed up with nbi, a human capital consultancy, to ask that question of around 40 senior partners in some of the world’s leading consulting firms. Few of the women we spoke to benefited from having women above them; even fewer could point to a good female role model. But perhaps the most interesting fact to emerge from our research was the importance of sponsorship.

Let’s be clear: sponsors are different to mentors. Mentoring helps people fit in and, in some cases, excel, whereas sponsorship requires someone other than the woman championing her cause; ‘leaning in’ on her behalf, as Sheryl Sandberg has famously put it. “I think women can really just work hard but get nowhere unless they have somebody who gives them broader chances and opens up new opportunities,” commented one person we spoke to, “somebody who speaks for them.”

Fewer than 40% of our interviewees benefited from having a sponsor, but those that had were clear about the impact it had: “My sponsor was absolutely critical, though I didn’t realise it at the time," one told us. "He used to take me along for lunches, introduce me to people, I just thought he was ‘feeding me’. He gave me a lot of exposure.”

Mentors are important and every candidate for promotion, male or female, deserves one. But sponsors are special and can make a huge difference: according to one female partner, “My sponsor restored my faith in what it meant to be a partner; he helped me with my own self confidence and encouraged me to think I would be a good partner.” Women in consulting firms needs sponsors if they’re going to get to partner, and beyond.