Female leadership in IT: why intake is your real problem
AuthorMSP Late NightPublished on:5 lessons on female leadership that most MSPs miss
Female leadership in IT is a subject most MSP owners get slightly nervous about. Not because it is unimportant. Because the conversation usually derails into quotas, discomfort, or someone saying they mainly believe in “authentic leadership”. Fine statement. Does not solve your Monday morning staffing.
Five lessons that do produce something.
1. You do not have a retention problem. You have an intake problem.
Ten male applicants to one woman, and that one doubts during the intake conversation whether this is “something for her”. You do not solve that with salary or benefits. That is a perception problem that starts before your vacancy goes live.
Check your own job advert. “Hands-on tech hero” and “ninja” filter candidates out before you have ever spoken to them.
2. The stairs up are sticking, not the door out.
Women already inside often choose roles that feel familiar: service desk, functional management, project coordination. While that same talent can handle an engineering or leadership role perfectly well.
So the problem is not with who leaves. It is with who does not move up.
3. Quotas often break more than they repair.
A good woman in a strong position automatically gets handed a rucksack in a quota culture: she is only there because she is a woman. Even when she was objectively the best candidate.
Quotas give you a percentage in the annual report. They change nothing about the meeting where the same three men build on each other and she is asked at the end whether she has anything to add. That is a number. Not a culture.
4. Safety is the responsibility of the majority.
In a team of 80% men and 20% women that responsibility sits with the 80%. Not by walking on eggshells. But by being aware of what you say, when and to whom.
And it works both ways: if something grates, ask about it instead of inventing a story around it yourself. Nine times out of ten that story is something entirely different from what you projected onto it.
5. Visibility is free marketing.
An applicant who sees three women on your careers page talking about their work no longer thinks “is this something for me”. She thinks “how quickly can I get a seat there”.
It costs you nothing extra. It does cost you the effort of putting them on the stage, not as “our female engineer”, but as the professional who is simply good at the job.
The MSPs that come through an uncertain market best over the coming years are the companies with diverse leadership. Not as a goal in itself. Because different angles lead to better decisions.
Anyone investing now in intake, safety and visibility is building a company where in five years it is no longer remarkable that a woman is in charge.
Anyone waiting for the quota from above…