Turning Male Leaders into Allies | Best Practice by DOW
Engaging men as allies is critical for fostering a culture of inclusion. To capture this opportunity, Dow conducted a special inclusion workshop targeting male leaders. The participants found the MARC (Men Advocating Real Change) workshop eye-opening and the experience had a real impact on changing perceptions and behaviors. Building on the success of the first MARC session, Dow’s Europe, Middle East, Africa & India (EMEAI) leadership team committed to further workshops at other company sites. We expect to see the positive impact reflected in employee survey results, gender statistics and eventually financial performance.
This best practice was first published in the Gender Intelligence Report 2020.
‘Engaging men as allies’ is one of the four strategic pillars for the Women Inclusion Network (WIN) at Dow, along with ‘fostering a culture of inclusion’, ‘advancement of women’ and ‘engaging external partners’. Today, the majority of career and promotion decisions in Dow are made by men. The issue is that male leaders are not always aware of the additional challenges facing women in their career choices. Bringing men on board as allies is critical to achieving gender equality. To turn the challenge into an opportunity, Dow decided to partner with a trusted, global thought leader, Catalyst, to conduct the first MARC workshop at Dow’s EMEAI Headquarters, in Horgen, Switzerland in September 2019.
Global Digital Customer Experience Leader Industrial Solutions at Dow Europe GmbH & EMEAI Women Inclusion Network (WIN) Chair
The 1.5-day face-to-face session was attended by 50 leaders with 80% male participation. The session consisted of sharing of experiences and honest discussions about gender biases. Based on feedback, the participants found the session eye-opening and one that changed their perceptions and behaviors (see below for participants’ testimonials). A critical success factor for the session was support from the influential sponsor, Dow EMEAI President Neil Carr. His engagement in promoting the session among leaders and sharing a personal reflection to open the session demonstrated his strong inclusion & diversity (I&D) commitment and set the needed tone for the workshop from the top.
After the session, the Dow EMEAI leadership team decided to extend this experience across the organization. In Q3 and Q4 2020, two more MARCs are taking place in major European sites. In parallel, we are running MARC dialogues, a self-guided series of awareness and discussion sessions. They are led by Dow volunteers across multiple sites and offices.
Dow Europe and EMEAI leadership at a MARC (Men Advocating Real Change) workshop (photo credits: Studio2020)
Dow CEO Jim Fitterling is a passionate advocate for inclusion and diversity and leads Dow’s drive to diversify its global talent. He has played a key role in the Company’s transformation goal to create the most innovative, customer-centric, inclusive and sustainable materials science company in the world. With inclusion as one of Dow’s strategic pillars, he sets expectations and the tone from the top. A key metric for inclusion is the employee level of participation in Dow’s Employee Resource Groups (ERG). Fitterling expects every leader to be a member and actively participate in the company’s ERGs.
MARC workshop was very powerful as it highlighted to me how much bias there still is against women in the workplace. I believed I was a very inclusive leader but didn’t realize enough how women feel when they walk out of their hotel (or decide not to out of fear) when they are travelling for work, or how they may feel when they stand in front of a sometimes mostly male audience finding the right balanc e between being too soft or too hard.
The biggest impact for me was the moment when several women got tears in their eyes (and men following accordingly) when they were asked if they had been faced with unwanted physical or verbal approaches in the recent past.
This is when I realized I should not assume all is right in what we call our emancipated world and that men need to play an active role to achieve true gender equality. Things are improving in some parts of the world, but even in these places, we still have a long way to go. My personal take away is that I actively focus on work performance and not on style, I invite women who are not speaking in meetings to speak up, highlight actively positive contributions and point out to other men when they use stereotypes.
– Herman Motmans, Senior Product Director
As of 2020, Dow’s employee performance award program was redesigned to reflect a more balanced scorecard. On top of financial metrics, new environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals were introduced. Within the ESG goals are metrics for inclusion, specifically for senior leader levels.
The inclusion indicators are related to Employee Resource Group (ERG) participation, representation of Women and U.S. minorities across the organization. In this way, the annual bonus for leaders is directly linked to the achievement of inclusion goals, reinforcing the aim that the tone be set from the top at Dow. As a result, Dow has significantly increased the activity level and number of employees engaged in company ERGs.
For me MARC was fundamentally about awareness … awareness of the human experiences we share and those where life feels very different because of gender. And it allows men to think what their role in all this is and what can I do to promote talent precisely because perceptions so easily prevent opportunities from being offered (or taken) where they should be. It was a powerful experience and has definitely changed my approach to role selection and career and team development.
– Howard Chase, Senior Government Affairs Global Director
Engaging men as allies is critical for an inclusive corporate culture. The push is needed from multiple angles and at all levels of the organization, from top to bottom, at Headquarters and in remote locations. Top management support is the most important factor for success since it is senior leaders who set the tone for their organizations and are the most visible role models. The challenge with I&D initiatives is that the results are not happening overnight. This is why the ball might be dropped or the focus could get lost, especially in times of disruption. Yet this is exactly when we need I&D the most!
We will monitor MARC impact alongside our other initiatives through the employee survey results, gender statistics and ultimately financial performance. In the post-COVID world in search for ‘outside of the box’ and sustainable competitive solutions, organizations need diversity of perspectives more than ever!
For me the MARC training was truly an eye opener from several aspects. One of them was that we all carry ‘baggage’ that make us all very different while at the same time very equal and human; vulnerable and strong at the same. The other take away was the experience of truly listening to each other. A listening not to judge nor to act but to understand the other persons perspective. This is a first step and as the two days passed by, I saw many of my male colleagues truly listening to understand on what it means being a female leader or employee today.
I used to believe that many men like to talk about gender diversity while they don’t drive this because of own fear of competition. As the training passed by one of my personal insights was that many want the change as much as we do – but don’t know how we can truly advance in big steps. We need to help each other as everyone agreed that it is for best of our company and societies we live in.
– Katja Wodjereck, Commercial Director
We would be delighted to share more with you on how we are successfully engaging men as women’s allies at Dow. Please do not hesitate to Dow’s Office of Inclusion at fhgidex@Dow.com.
This Best Practice was first published in the Gender Intelligence Report 2021.
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