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Page 4 of 5
Mentors
Yates says she respects great entrepreneurs, who create something out of nothing, and then go on to lead great businesses.
She believes Paul Cave, the Founder and Chairman of BridgeClimb, is a
good example. "I admire him very much for his tenacity, energy and
commitment, he's created a great business that will endure."
Yates says she has had one mentor who was from the advertising
industry, and came along at a point in her life when she really needed
support.
"I think many men are uncomfortable mentoring women, because they fear
their involvement might be misinterpreted. It's a great shame. I coach
a number of men and women these days, which I very much enjoy.
"The lesson I learned from my mentor, which has really stuck with me,
is the value of patience as a strategic tool. I tend to rush things,
and the notion that waiting will sometimes deliver what you want was a
very valuable one for me," Yates says.
Yates also has a wide network of influential female friends and believes that networking is only important if it's strategic.
"You can waste an awful lot of time networking with people who do not
have any ability to affect your career. I encourage the people I coach
to think about the people who can genuinely impact their career, and
concentrate their networking focus on those people," she says.
Future
As for the future, Yates hopes that the balance of her working life,
which she hopes will not be all that much longer, will continue to be a
mix of things she really likes doing.
"I'm loving coaching and am finding that very rewarding. I like working
with government and have had a number of government roles over the
years. But that interface between the public and private sector I find
really interesting. To the extent that if I can continue to make a
contribution there, that's great," she says.
Women in business
At the "tail end" of her career, Sandra Yates says it is disappointing
to reflect on how little progress has been made in the area of women in
senior management.
"When you think that women have been in massive numbers in the
workforce for about 30 years, it's disappointing that we've made so
little progress."
Yates said initiatives that, for example, encourage businesses and male
CEOs to provide further opportunities for women are useful but very
slow.
"I think initially, we all hoped that just the sheer volume of women in
the workforce, over time, as our skill levels built, would make a
difference. But it's becoming clear that time itself doesn't deliver
equity for women. As worthy as all of those initiatives are, none of
them on their own are going to change the world," Yates says.
Yates's views were reinforced with the release of the third Australian
Census of Women in Leadership conducted by the Equal Opportunity for
Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA).
The 2004 census shows that while there has been a gradual increase in
the number of women stepping up to senior positions - with women's
workforce participation climbing to the highest-ever rate of 45 per
cent, and 56 per cent of university graduates being female - women are
still scarce in the top most corporate positions.
Of the ASX200 companies surveyed, women hold only two Chairs of Boards
and four CEO positions, even though a recent report by US research
group Catalyst found that women are just as likely as men to covet the
top jobs.
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