JTI: What Gender Agnostic Leadership Looks Like

Right now, a lot is happening to celebrate women in manufacturing.

The 2024 Women in Manufacturing (WiM) summit was recently held and logistics leader XPO held its fifth annual UK Female Driver Forum this week.

“We are excited to have been able to run our second Female Driver Forum this year, not only to celebrate the successes of our female drivers but to allow them to spend time discussing the topics that matter to them," says Lynn Brown, Vice President of Human Resources, UK and Ireland at XPO Logistics.

"Our Female Driver Academy has been instrumental in helping us move towards our goal of increasing the number of female drivers in our business and ensuring that we understand and remove any impediments to our progress.

"We want to continue encouraging more women to pursue this rewarding career.” 

Indeed, we need more women in the manufacturing sector, especially in frontline and senior roles where they are chronically underrepresented.

"I read with horror that 16% of the world's engineers are women," says Corinne Burrows, Supply Chain VP and former VP of Global Manufacturing at JTI.

"30 years ago, when I was embarking on an engineering career, I thought in a generation we’d see huge changes and equal representation. That hasn’t happened yet."

Endeavouring to contribute to challenging this gender divide, Corinne is passionate about using her experience to get more women into manufacturing and STEM.

"I get immense pleasure when I’m able to mentor, help or encourage other women entering STEM professions," she says.

"I’ve always sought to support other women and I think we all can do so much by encouraging someone to push through, be brave and go for new opportunities."

JTI is further encouraging this through its 12 month STEM Internship programme, specifically tailored to women. 

During the global programme young female graduates work in different departments in JTI's factories across the globe to gain a full manufacturing experience. 

At locations such as JTI's Dagmersellen factory in Switzerland, interns work in local and global projects which include Integrated Work Systems (IWS) and automation. 

Interns receive tailored mentorship and coaching from their factory lead, with the scope and time spent at different stations chosen according to the interns' growing strengths and interests. Participants get a customised development plan for their future careers and the opportunity to participate in a Mentoring and Global Learning & Development programme.

JTI currently has 15 young female STEM talents on the programme, helping to create a stronger female talent pipeline for manufacturing.

This global programme is also helping to create a gender-agnostic future, where there is greater equality of gender representation in the industry and leaders can be highlighted based on skill and contributions alone. 

Corinne looks forward to this future, as a huge proponent of gender agnostic leadership.

The value of gender agnosticism

Corinne is in favour of a gender agnostic approach to leadership. This perspective has been solidified by her decades long career in manufacturing, during which she has travelled and worked across the world.

"When I first went to Mexico everyone told me 'it's a very macho culture; you need to be adaptable, use your style to get things done in a different way'," she explains.

"But when I actually sat down with the local management team, they were super careful and slightly nervous to have a woman for the first time on their leadership team."

In this instance, sensitivity to gender and culture created an initial vigilance in the team, within which ideas about people's identities superseded their reception as individuals.

Other presumptions about gender dynamics in Mexico and how that would manifest in manufacturing had primed Corinne to expect a particular response. The local management team was also extremely mindful and vigilant of the fact she was a woman.

Initially this created a slight distance, which dissipated as they worked closer together.

"Within two weeks when I’d integrated into the team it was my personality that mattered," Corrine continues.

"It’s not so much your gender which determines how well you're received or how well you work with colleagues but your leadership style."

The term 'leadership style' alone is complicated ground when it comes to gender dynamics and the workplace.

There's significant evidence that women and men on the whole have distinctively different leadership styles-influenced by socialisation and, of course, reception - which lead to different outcomes.

The gendered realities of leadership styles

In McKinsey's 'Why So Many Bad Bosses Still Rise To The Top' the consultancy found that stereotypically 'female' leadership- which tends to be characterised by cooperation, empathy and collective decision-making- statistically leads to better business outcomes than stereotypical 'male' leadership, which is characterised more by aggression, risk-taking and competition.

This difference in leadership styles is greatly moulded by double-standards.

Women are penalised more than men at work for 'masculine' leadership traits- like being decisive, firm and taking risks. We've all heard the 'he's a boss, she's so bossy' paradigm. Meanwhile, men are more likely to be rewarded for being supposedly 'masculine' leaders. 

This is something Corinne is deeply conscious of too. On LinkedIn she shared some writings, titled 'A Few Thoughts On Diversity' that explore her experience with this.

"I undertook training with my regional Ops team on Unconscious Bias," she writes.

"Within the training, we discussed stereotypes – the way that small boys and girls play naturally and how this manifests itself into the preferred style that often men and women exhibit at work.

"So despite my discomfort in talking about what my own experiences have been, I acknowledge that there is a difference in the way that different genders handle themselves in the workplace and that can have the effect of making success more challenging - and result in an imbalance in gender representation in the workplace."

Determining how much leadership style is a choice and how much it's moulded by patterns of incentives is a difficult task.

But we must also ensure that in acknowledging these patterns that we don't fall into cliches of gender essentialism, or the idea that to be successful as a woman or man you need to play the game and exhibit the leadership that will be the most successful for your gender.

There are many leaders who defy these gendered expectations to great success and while barriers undoubtedly exist, often the biggest barrier is the one that we imagine awaits us. Manufacturing is thought of as this very traditionally macho environment, even as a place that is not for or unwelcoming to women and this naturally impacts hiring rates.

In reality, what we've heard from frontline workers and executives who are women has been largely positive. 

There are valid criticisms of gender agnostic approaches, mainly that they can render prejudice invisible and miss opportunities for equity.

But what often isn't discussed is the way the hyper-visibility of being a minority in an environment you're underrepresented in renders your individuality invisible.

Being treated as a representative of 'your group', where your successes, failures and opinions are solely tied to your identity instead of you as a unique person is a distinctively dehumanising experience. In this context, even the most positive attempts at inclusion can feel deeply patronising.

So what we're trying to say is that yes, subconscious bias undoubtedly exists, but so does conscious thought, which frequently overrides the biases and assumptions we've had baked into us by socialisation. As was evident with Corinne's experience in Mexico.

"Sometimes it can be men who have difficulty with their style and a certain environment," she adds.

"Ultimately a gender agnostic approach embraces what you can control- the way you lead, interact with people and approach problems." 

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