Boards for Balance: Your Leadership Shadow

The latest initiative to come from Chief Executive Women and the Australian Institute of Company Directors provides a tried and tested framework for chairs, boards and CEOs to lead together in driving gender balance throughout their organisations.

When it comes to creating gender balanced organisations, boards can set the tone from the top by asking the tough questions and holding executives accountable. Boards for Balance: Your Leadership Shadow is a collaboration between Chief Executive Women (CEW) and the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) designed to assist chairs and board members to play a leadership role in helping to progress gender balance in their organisations from the boardroom.

The Boards for Balance initiative builds on the ‘Leadership Shadow model’, created by the Male Champions of Change (MCC) and CEW in 2014, as well as CEW’s highly successful CEO Conversations program, facilitated by CEW members. Boards for Balance has also been developed with the support of Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Even when leaders recognise the issues within their organisation, it is often hard for them to translate this into individual actions.

To support the initiative, a resource has been created that outlines practical actions for boards to undertake across four aspects of leadership: what we say; how we act; what we prioritise; and how we measure. It applies best practice research to enable chairs and boards to partner with their CEOs and executive teams and create meaningful outcomes for gender balance.