ESSENTIALS FOR LEADERS AND THOSE THEY LEAD

Welcome to the latest edition of Leading Off. We hope you find our insights useful. Let us know what you think at [email protected] and [email protected].

—Alex and Axel

A decade ago, we conducted our first wave of research with LeanIn.Org on the state of women in corporate America and what women’s day-to-day work experiences were really like. After hearing from more than 480,000 employees over the past ten years, we have learned so much about what’s working (and what’s not) with companies’ efforts to make the workplace fairer and more inclusive. In short, there’s still much more work to do. This week, we reflect on the gains that women and their companies have made, why women’s experiences are not so different from what they were years ago, and the ways in which companies can make sustainable progress toward gender parity.

AN IDEA

Recommit to women’s advancement

During our ten years of research on the corporate pipeline, many companies have taken action on workplace diversity, and important gains have been made. Yet according to McKinsey senior partners Alexis Krivkovich and Lareina Yee and their coauthors, the findings from the tenth-anniversary Women in the Workplace report underscore the persistent obstacles that women confront in the workplace. Progress, in other words, remains fragile—especially for women of color—and parity for all women, according to our projections, is almost 50 years away. In many ways, women’s outlook, as well as their day-to-day experiences (dealing with microaggressions, for example), are the same or worse than when we started keeping tabs. True progress requires a renewed commitment from companies and an expanded playbook, including both practical steps that foster inclusion (such as debiasing hiring and promotion processes and activating employees to curb bias) and broader, systemic changes that are rooted in new mindsets and behaviors about women’s contributions and potential at work.

A BIG NUMBER

34%

That’s the share of employees at large companies who, in a survey about motivation and performance management, said their managers did not have the sufficient skills to conduct performance reviews. According to McKinsey senior partners Brooke Weddle and Dana Maor and their coauthors, “employees were significantly more motivated by performance reviews when they were offered by a skilled manager and reflected the achievement of a performance goal.” The survey indicates that formal evaluations matter for both employee engagement and advancement—where women are already at a disadvantage, given the state of the corporate pipeline—and it’s one of the many ways managers can actively shape their employees’ work experiences, including career development.

A QUOTE

“Stress at work is death by a thousand paper cuts. It’s a hundred little deals that feel like one big deal. So if you start early and bring up specific behaviors, these conversations are pretty painless.”

That’s NYU professor of psychology and author Tessa West on how people can reclaim agency in a toxic workplace. In a conversation about toxic behaviors and burnout with McKinsey’s Jacqueline Brassey, West explains that most of us will eventually experience toxic behaviors at work—and that many feel disempowered to respond to or raise these issues with our colleagues. Such behaviors include microaggressions: daily slights that are rooted in bias, undermine women’s abilities, and contribute to stress, burnout, and turnover. Microaggressions are also one aspect of women’s work experience that, according to this year’s Women in the Workplace research, has not improved over time.

A SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW

It stands to reason that people are chosen for leadership roles after demonstrating the qualities that would ultimately make them good leaders: integrity, humility, and empathy, to name a few. Not so, according to Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. In an interview with McKinsey’s Brooke Weddle and Bryan Hancock, he shares that organizations tend to favor characteristics such as overconfidence, narcissism, and even incompetence in candidates for leadership roles, who (still) tend to be men more often than women. If these habits seem counterproductive for both men and women in the workplace, they are. So, what’s the cure? Dr. Chamorro-Premuzic recommends that companies “ignore everything that is style and not substance” and focus more on potential leaders’ soft skills, as well as traits that make other people better—a defining characteristic of leadership. “If you look at that, then you’re going to have a selection of individuals who are predisposed for leadership roles and who look very different from the majority of leaders today.”

— Edited by Daniella Seiler, executive editor, Washington, DC

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