The power of three: three women on a hoard, that is. Five prominent women corporate directors analyze the 'female factor in a board's success. Says one: 'We survive by our wit and our grit.'.

• Author: Kristie, James
• Position: BOARD LEADERSHIP

IT IS SAID that one woman on the board is a token, two is a presence, and three is a voice. In fact, having three or more women on a board makes it a more effective board. That was one of the important research findings that came out of a survey of corporate directors in both 2010 and 2011 (see below). This was a survey released by WomenCorporateDirectors (WCD) and Heidrick & Struggles, conducted by Dr. Boris Groysberg, a Harvard Business School professor, and research associate Deborah Bell. To further test that notion, WCD scheduled a panel discussion of "Boards with Three or More Women" at its first annual Global Institute held in May 2011, an event that attracted 200 women directors from around the world. Five women directors who are in the enviable position of serving on a board with three or more women spoke for 90 minutes on their experiences as a woman in the boardroom and the joys and benefits of serving with other women directors. Bonnie Gwin, vice chairman and managing partner, North America, of the Board of Directors Practice for Heidrick & Struggles, moderated the panel. Key excerpts from each of the women directors' comments follow.

--James Kristie

Maggie Wilderotter: Women bring a richness to board discussions

Maggie Wilderotter is chairman and CEO of Frontier Communications, one of the nation's largest independent providers of telecommunications services. She joined the company in 2004 after serving in a senior role with Microsoft Corp, In October 2010 President Barack Obama appointed her as vice chair of the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee. She is a director of Xerox Corp. and Procter & Gamble Co.

The Groundbreaker: 1 have sat on 23 public company boards in my career. Except for two of those companies, I have always been the first woman to join the board. At the three public company boards I now serve. Frontier Communications has four women directors; at Xerox there are four women on the board; and we have five women on the Procter & Gamble board. Since Bob McDonald has been CEO of P&G he has appointed four new board members--all of them women. He is a great role model for many other Fortune 500 companies.

It All Starts with One: Breaking the ice to getting more women on a board is getting the first woman on the board. Then you can prove to the other board members that we are not scary and that we can actually add to the conversation and to making good decisions. The board then develops a level of comfort that having different opinions in the room is okay. A great example is when 1 joined the Yahoo! Inc. board. That was four years ago, and I was the first woman on the board. Silicon Valley boards are typically venture capitalists--it is still a "boy's club" environment for many tech boards--so the Yahoo! board was taking a chance, and so was I, I gave them a level of comfort that having a woman was okay and that more women could be added to the board. I am no longer on that board, but there are two other women on the board today and I was a big catalyst in bringing both of them on board. So, I do think that if you start with one, you'll get more.

What Really Matters: It is not a foregone conclusion that one woman can't make an impact and that you must have multiple women on the board to make a difference. I have been on boards with one or two women who have had a very strong voice on those boards and were not taken for granted. And i have been on a board with three women where that was not necessarily the case. What really matters is the leadership of the board, the culture of the board, and the capabilities of the women anti men who serve on those boards.

We Encourage Dialogue: I firmly believe that women bring a richness and perspective to board discussions. The women who I serve with in my board experiences are strong women. There is a lot of self-confidence in the room. We are very good at encouraging dialogue. And we are particularly good at putting the elephant in the room on the table--in an appropriate way. We are not shy to bring up issues or participate in discussions that are important for the strategy and the future of the companies.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

A Mentor Role: Every couple of years the four women on the Frontier board do a two-day retreat with the senior women and the high-potential women in the company. The women on the board become teachers and mentors to help the women in our company grow in their leadership skills and capabilities. Also at Frontier, we have a formal mentor program involving the entire board. Each board member mentors a senior leader in the company for a two-year period. They get together with that executive three or four times a year outside of board meetings. This is a way for the board to get to know the talent in the organization. Then when I go through the succession plan with the board, each board member partners with me on their specific leader in helping the rest of the board know who they are, their capabilities, their potential, and what we need to do to help continue to develop them. On the Procter & Gamble board, the board does a trip once a year to a different region. As part of our most recent trip, Angela Braly [CEO of Wellpoint Inc.] and I held a meeting with the company's top women in Germany, Austria and Switzerland where we talked about the company's strategy, the work of the board, and how to be successful at Procter & Gamble. These are examples of the...