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Faculty Focus:
ELISABETH KELAN
Professor of Leadership
+44 (0)1234 754569
CRANF I ELD D I RECTORS PROGRAMME
Strategic leadership in depth and breadth
CRANF I ELD ADVANCED DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
Preparation for director level leadership
CRANF I ELD TALENT DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
Accelerating the managerial careers of high potential professionals
CRANF I ELD GENERAL MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME
Acquiring a business level perspective
Sara Shakespeare
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Management Focus
What are you working on at the moment?
I recently published a report with KPMG on how CEOs can support gender equality. The
study drew on a sample of CEOs who have signed the Women’s Empowerment Principles
(WEPs), an initiative of UN Women and the UN Global Compact. The research highlighted
the practices that CEOs who support gender equality use. I am now working on a number
of academic articles based on this study.
What is the current situation with increasing gender diversity on boards?
There has been a lot of focus on women on boards in the last few years. The ground-
breaking work of the Cranfield International Centre for Women Leaders has provided a
regular measure of the number of women executive directors on the corporate boards of
the UK’s top 100 companies since 1999. There has been much progress, particularly with
women in non-executive directorships, but we need a continued focus on this issue to
ensure sustainable progress.
What are the biggest challenges women leaders face today?
Over the last decade much of the public dialogue and academic research has focused on
what women can do to advance in business. Increasingly it is being recognised that it is the
organisational contexts that need to change to facilitate gender parity in leadership roles.
What changes would you like to see to improve the situation for women?
There are unconscious biases and stereotypes that exist about women in the
workplace. These deep-seated and subliminal biases shape how people
interact. We have a lot of research indicating that they have a big impact
on women’s careers. Many organisations have introduced forms of
unconscious bias awareness training to help eliminate those biases; I
would like to see more organisations taking this approach.
Do you have any words of advice for women looking to move
into a leadership role?
In my book
Rising Stars - Developing Millennial Women as
Leaders
, I explore the relationship that junior women have with
more senior women. Junior women can often not identify with
senior women as role models. Having multiple role models
and integrating them into how one wants to be is a better
leadership strategy than emulating a single role model.
What would you like to research in the future?
My next research project is a follow-on study from
the CEO research I conducted. In this new project
I will observe mid-level managers to see how
practices from mid-level managers can support
gender parity. I was able to secure a prestigious
British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship to
conduct the research over the next year.