In your experience as a top-level manager, do you think that there are differences in the way men and women achieve such senior roles?

Let us share the following observation: today in 2016 women still have difficulty in asserting their leadership in an environment that continues to promote traditionally a mainly male managerial model. A large number of women regularly tell me that they are not at ease with the notion of power, with asserting their ambitions, with promoting their successes, or even with negotiating their salary.

Many of them make the choice of moving to roles as specialists or experts, rather than take up more visible roles in management. This is at the risk of being confined to very support roles that do not give the necessary visibility for them to develop their talent.

Inside ENGIE, we have already provided several answers to that observation: the Mentoring by ENGIE program aimed at high-potential women; Taking the Stage, an awareness-creation tool developed by a Canadian agency for 1,800 women in the Group's international women's network (WIN: Women In Networking); and the development of an “Experts” activity line that helps identify the Group's future senior executives within that talent pool.

In 2013, we decided to go a step further by launching a program devoted to leadership for all women in ENGIE, both managers and those destined to carry out managerial responsibilities. The program aims at giving women the keys for exercising power, for removing their blind spots, and for developing their rightful ambitions.

It is a real tool for strengthening female leadership on a large scale, in line with the demands for adapting to the economic and social world, which is encouraging a greater diversity of leaders.

The same question regarding your experience as a member of boards of directors

I am delighted to see the major projects that have been carried out over the past few years in increasing the number of women on Boards of Directors, especially in France.

When I took on my first board duties in the 1990s, very few women were members of those bodies, and I can remember the debates that took place over the enactment of the Copé-Zimmerman Act, which, in France, introduced representative quotas of each gender for listed companies. Since so few women were board members, how could we possibly promote female career profiles—was this not a sign that women were not interested in those responsibilities?

We have to admit that the act pushed boundaries very quickly. And very talented and able women were ready for board mandates. Without this bill, they probably would never have gained access to these responsibilities. Women now bring all their know-how and skills to company boards. More than simply gender equality, it is a guarantee of performance and efficiency, of a complementary point of view that enhances company governance.

So I am particularly proud that following the voting at ENGIE's Mixed General Shareholders' on April 28, 2015, the Group's Board of Directors now has 63 percent women, the most female-representative board in the CAC 40.

You have a cultural and family background that is very entrepreneurial. Has this entrepreneurial spirit helped you to succeed? Do you think that this spirit of entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship can help women to succeed?

I believe in businesses, whatever their size.

Businesses are examples of the most fantastic human adventures, and the wealth they produce is not just financial.

As I am from a family of entrepreneurs, I understood very early in my life what a mine of initiative, resoluteness, effort, patience, and determination hid behind the word “entrepreneur.” Its qualities, which were decisive in my career path, seem to me to be even more vital in the world we are living in, a world undergoing profound changes, which requires greater agility, daring, and cohesion. I am convinced that women have a decisive role to play here.

At ENGIE, we can see that momentum—women's spirit of enterprise—in numerous initiatives that we are backing. Outside the group, we are signed up to initiatives that support women's startups and SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises). In 2014, we launched an incubation organization for employees to develop their projects in an adapted and safe framework. In particular, the incubator helped us to support new business projects—including some really remarkable ones—proposed by women from ENGIE's Women In Networking network, each one sponsored by one of the group's executive vice presidents.

In your opinion, are mentoring and sponsorship complementary in the workplace? How can these two levers be used in the most effective way?

Since 2008, as executive vice president, I have stimulated and supported ENGIE's commitment to the place of women in the company. Through program after program, we have carried out experiments, run pilots, and built up best practices in order to achieve ambitious goals and produce sustainable tools.

One of those tools—mentoring—stands out, with at least three virtues: helping mentees achieve their goals, including, but not only, top management posts; establishing mentors firmly in their responsibility; and proving that not only human beings, but also human relationships, have their place at the heart of the company—and even that those relationships are a criterion of performance.

In 2015, no technology or algorithm contributed more to that than the eyes of others: vigilant and kind eyes, eyes that encompass a wide view, knowing eyes. Basically, that is what a mentor represents, at any rate the mentors I know and the mentor that I hope I am. Questions from mentees often bring mentors back to their past experiences but also make them think about their future.

Mentoring is a three-sided story: mentor, mentee, and company. It is a win-win-win program, enabling people to work on mentalities, creating a snowball effect that goes beyond the players concerned.

As well as mentoring, I also recommend that women develop their networks, build relationships of trust around them, and publicize their successes and their ambitions. That is how they will rally allies around them, true sponsors who believe in their potential and will act as facilitators whenever opportunities present themselves, as career accelerators.

Sponsors and mentors take part in a complementary approach, which is absolutely vital for career paths.

Statistics aside, have you noticed a change in the way in which the men in the group regard the careers of women?

Absolutely.

Let's face it, we are in the midst of the technological and economic upheavals to come. This period is challenging for us: we are not just going through one crisis, nor several crises—we are undergoing profound changes.

We can choose to hold on to our entrenched positions, our exclusive preserve, our acquired assets. Or we can choose to move forward and embrace the unknown. To endure changes or to take part in them. We must be even bolder, even more courageous, and even more tenacious. We must give up on giving up. We have “to dare to dare.”

Daring is what we showed in 2008, when our chairman, Gérard Mestrallet, spurred on our full policy in favor of the place of women. It was a visionary and brave initiative, a strong signal to our entire company.

This ambitious policy, the mentoring program in particular, has truly changed mentalities and helped to establish a real culture of gender diversity. By involving male mentors, we have created a genuine new awareness.

As we have always stated, we cannot advance the place of women without the commitment of everyone, men and women. It is not simply a question of equality, but a challenge to society, a question of performance for our organizations. I believe that this message is truly a shared one, that depriving ourselves of one-half of human talent is, quite frankly, inept.

Gender equality is the key to the future—a key to performance—in all aspects of our lives, particularly in companies.