Whether your company or department has 15 people or 150, if you did not start your business with a gender-balanced team, achieving gender parity can feel like an insurmountable challenge. I’m here to tell you it is not.

McKinsey and LeanIn.org’s Women in the Workplace 2018 Study* was just released, showing that women’s progress in holding a more equitable proportion of company roles remains very slow.

Why equity?  Why not equality?

Equity is fair treatment, equality is equal treatment.  If you start from a place of disadvantage and are then treated equally to a person with advantage, you perpetuate and ultimately grow the gap between the two of you.  You need equitable measures first to close that gap and get everyone to a level playing field.

One of the most frequent topics that comes up in coaching falls under the theme of figuring out when to fish or cut bait.  Many people feel torn about when to keep trying to make a work situation work better versus deciding to move on.  Moving on can bring a lot of baggage related to feelings of failure, even if that work environment was never going to be somewhere that person could thrive in the first place.  If the person is an active leader and advocate for others at work the feelings get even more complicated.

There is nothing worse at work than a leader who talks about supporting their people but won’t put their words into action.  Male or female, it's equally bad.

10 years ago I co-founded my prior company's first women's group - and first advocacy group of any kind at the company.  Only 10% of the leadership team was female and the pipeline to bring more women up through the ranks was pretty bleak.  We had a lot of talented women at junior levels but stalled out mid-way to the top.  And there was no clear reason why.

Many companies have created internal groups for women, sometimes called employee or business resource groups (ERGs or BRGs).  While these can provide great support for women, they are not a silver bullet for solving all the challenges women face in the workplace. Here is what you need to know to make them most effective.

A critical step in women achieving greater equity and equality at work is building alliances with the good men who are at the top and on the path to get there.  We want to be your partners and work together for the benefits that everyone receives from a more diverse workplace.  We know many of you want that too.  Here's how you can help us…

The organizers of the French Open announced last week they would not seed Serena Williams even though Williams was ranked No.1 when she left the tour on maternity leave in January 2017.*  Instead she will return No. 453.  Sadly this reflects what many women face when returning to work from maternity leave.

Tapping into your network, both within and outside of your company, can provide great insights and support for your career growth.  But first you need to be clear on what you need, who can help and where the gaps exist in your network that you need to fill...

There is much talk today about women getting stuck in middle management and falling victim to the "leaky pipeline."  But using this term is a disservice to the severity of the problem.  It implies first that there is a single path to leadership, and second that some minor patchwork will fix the problem.  It also implies it's a woman's problem when the issue is much deeper and more systemic.