To coincide with International Women's Day, Legal Week has asked a number of high profile female law firm leaders and partners for their advice for other women hoping for the same success. In this interview, Reed Smith Europe and Middle East managing partner Tamara Box discusses the importance of mentors, sponsors and senior female role models

Mentors offer advice that helps to shape the actions and attitudes of women as they develop their careers. Sponsors champion those women to partners, management and clients, to ensure that others know about their skills and qualities. Both mentoring and sponsoring are conscious, overt actions that have been shown to be successful in moving women (and men) through the pipeline toward leadership.

Yet many key management positions still remain elusive, even for the most qualified women with the most conscientious sponsors, because the conscious brain cannot overcome the implicit bias that influences decision-making.

"I have no bias," you hear leaders protest, "I consider men and women equally." But we all know that isn't true. Everyone is biased in one way or another as a result of the development in our subconscious of a sense of what is 'normal' or 'the norm'.

That's where role models come in.

Many people think the function of a role model is to be an example, sending a message to aspiring leaders that "I have made it; so can you". Certainly, a good role model will inspire ambitious women but role models also operate on a sociological level to change the subconscious mindset; in this way, they target the population as a whole – men and women alike. The actual work of the person who fills the role model shoes is less important than the subtle signal that she sends that it is 'normal' to have female leaders.

Implicit bias is not limited to men; women have also been shown to have implicit bias against women. Neither training nor managerial directive has been able to mitigate the culturally defined 'norm' that keeps women from reaching their potential and law firms from benefiting from the fresh thinking that diversity provides.

There is an answer to the problem, however – role models. When the leader of a large law firm or corporation is just as likely to be female as male, implicit bias is no longer a factor in the selection of partners, managers and leaders. The subconscious mind accepts both genders as 'normal'.

A gradual trend toward gender balance is occurring, thanks to the work of mentors, sponsors and leaders who are trying to shift the needle with executive actions. But sociological change, not individual change, is needed if we are to transform our businesses in the near future. Quite simply, we have to modify the collective subconscious mind and the only way to do that is to place female role models in positions of leadership.

Those role models can be the catalyst for change in the cultural view of the roles of men and women in society, giving rise to equal opportunity for everyone to pursue the occupation of his or her own choosing. The benefits of this sociological change accrue not only to individuals but to organisations, families and the world as a whole.

I look forward to the day when the appointment of a female managing partner is no longer news, but simply a normal activity in the operation of a law firm.