WOMEN’S success needs to be celebrated. Plans and strategies and policies have important parts to play, but it’s role models who will ultimately inspire other women to take on leadership positions.

At the University of Sheffield these role models include Gillian Gehring, professor of solid state physics; Sally McArthur, a senior lecturer in the traditionally male world of engineering; and Kathryn Riddle, the university’s first female pro-chancellor. But it’s not just women who inspire women, according to Professor Micheline Beaulieu, the university’s first woman pro-vice-chancellor. “Encouragement comes not just from female colleagues — it comes from male colleagues as well.”

Sally Evans, a senior manager in the group equality and diversity team at Lloyds TSB, agrees. “As leaders go, our chief executive, Eric Daniels, is very inspiring, particularly in the work that he has done around women and leadership.” For example, he works with the bank’s women’s network and expects to see women candidates on headhunters’ shortlists whenever he is recruiting for a senior position, she says.

Mary Meaney, a partner at McKinsey & Company, joined the consultancy partly because “over the course of the interviewing process I met some phenomenally impressive women.” She salutes the male mentors who helped her to progress and the senior women who acted as role models. “One thing I really appreciated when I joined . . . was to see how many senior women there were,” she says. “There’s no one-size-fits-all model — you can come from any background and be successful.”

That inspiration stood Meaney in good stead when she decided to start a family. “As my life and my personal circumstances changed, so my outlook and the way I was reaching out for role models changed. For me one of the big issues when I first started having children was a good work-life balance that combined my personal and professional interests.” She appreciated having role models who showed that it was perfectly possible to combine a family with making partner, which she did at the same time as some of the men she joined with, despite taking maternity leave and working part-time.

Meaney’s success has doubtless inspired others; that’s also something that Sue Southern, a chief inspector at West Midlands police, is learning about. “The more I move through the organisation the greater the impact I can make, not only on policy, but as a role model,” she says.

“I have noticed that when I get promoted I receive a number of e-mails from other colleagues saying ‘well done’; 99 per cent are from female colleagues. It made me realise that I am seen as someone that other people want to follow. The positioning of women in management has helped other women to gain confidence to move forward.”

But it’s not just women who benefit from having inspiring women leaders, Southern says; colleagues of either gender can profit from the different approaches that women bring to leadership. “When you expose people to different management styles it helps them to develop their own framework.”

While the value of inspiring women leaders is enormous, practical schemes that support them as they move into leadership provide important back-up. For example, Sheffield university runs programmes around the promotion process and to help those returning from maternity leave to get back into research; a supper club provides senior women officers at West Midlands Police with informal networking opportunities; and Lloyds TSB’s emphasis on promoting from within is designed to help women see career paths that can lead them all the way to the top.

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