Another national publication has picked up on our story of servant leadership.
The Wall Street Journal published a story this week that looked at the spotty progress toward advancing women in the workplace.
The Journal called CEO Mehran Assadi for a conversation about his own leadership style and the culture he has built at National Life.
The Journal’s story painted a mixed portrait of how well corporate America is doing to ensure that women are as well represented in leadership roles as they should be.
But National Life and Mehran both got a positive shout-out. Check out the story here. National Life isn’t mentioned until about halfway through, but here’s what the Journal had to say:
More promising is tapping them to act as sponsors for women or to take part in groups charged with finding solutions, he says.
National Life Group, a Montpelier, Vt.-based financial-services company with 1,100 employees, evaluates its 200 managers each year on how they meet broad principles—such as “value an inclusive, diverse culture” and “encourage others to speak their minds”—aimed partly at bolstering women.
Both peers and direct reports evaluate those managers, who afterward meet with their teams to discuss what they do well and where there is room for improvement. Those assessments, Chief Executive Mehran Assadi says, are conducted separately from the annual bonus cycle so that the managers don’t view them as punitive.
In the same vein, Mr. Assadi says he doesn’t push diversity quotas. “I never want a situation where someone says, ‘The CEO wants a woman in this role,’ ” he says. Instead, he says, he will often weigh in on hiring or promotion conversations by asking, “Are we getting enough diversity of thinking here?”
These combined efforts have helped boost the number of women in senior roles at National Life Group by nearly a third over the past five years, with women now representing 39% of senior leaders, the company says.