#HBRLive: Where Do Women Stand Today in Leading Positions?

0:28This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. work? Use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Hello and welcome to this HBR Live event. I'm Sarah Green, host of the HBR IdeaCast.

1:03I'm here today with editor of HBR, Amy Bernstein, and we're going to be talking about Women in Leadership, which is the subject of our September 2013 issue. If you have any questions at any time, either just type them into the comment box on the Hangout itself or ask us via Twitter with the hashtag HBRLive. This is our first Google Hangout, so if you have any feedback on how we're doing or other topics you'd like us to cover, just let us know that as well. Thank you so much for being here, and thank you, Amy, for joining us. Oh, this is fun. I'm looking forward to it. So there has been so much discussion this past year around this topic.

1:42What really surprised you when you started pulling this issue together and really digging into some of the research? You know, one of the challenges of pulling this issue together was finding stuff that surprised us because the topics had been so well covered. We had Sheryl Sandberg and Ann Marie Slaughter discussing the topic. We had just had a convocation at Harvard Business School on the 50th anniversary of women at the school. So I went into it kind of skeptical. I kept thinking, you know, what's left to say? And what surprised me was there's plenty left to say. Well, and to that point, I know one of the key concepts that has come out of the issue is the concept of second-generation gender bias.

2:30Right. Just tell us, what is that? Second-generation gender bias is bias that you feel but don't really see. In other words, it's kind of tacit. It's not hard and fast rules about how many women or it actually goes beyond gender, how many people of color can get ahead, whatever. It's the kind of bias of expectations. So where a man will get a clap on the back from his colleagues for being assertive in a meeting, let's say a woman will be deemed pushy, right? where a fellow will be seen to stand his ground when he asserts a point of view, a woman is seen as kind of a loud mouth. So, and the interesting thing about this bias is that women embrace it as much as men do and it's passive.

3:31So, you know, in a way we're our own enemies sometimes. Tell me a little bit more, what do you mean by that when you say that women have sort of embraced it and suffered from it at the same time? Well I think that there's a feedback loop, particularly in the workplace. So when you, and this is what the lead article in this package talks about, when you assert a perspective and the world seems to kind of look askance at you because you've been you know, maybe too pushy, it disrupts a cycle of kind of the learning cycle, the process of becoming a leader. Because we become leaders when the world kind of affirms for us that it's okay for us to be leaders.

4:16And if the world says back to us that, you know, our offering a point of view, leaning in, to use Schell Sandberg's phrase, is not welcome, then we're not going to. And these are behaviors that we've learned through years that are expected of us. You know, it's the soft bigotry of low expectations in a different context. Yeah, you can't really be a leader if people won't follow you. And if people say, no, the way you're a leader isn't acceptable to us. And the other thing... brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

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5:47Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. The way it shows up is that it is human nature to gravitate toward people who look like you, who sound like you, who use the same mental models that you use. So men who occupy most of the leadership positions are going to take as their protégés other men and are going to help train them and kind of pull them up through the system. So it's a very slow process to start getting women up through the system that way. Well, and in the issue, there are so many CEO voices, both for men and women. Was there any particular anecdote or story that jumped out at you?

6:33Oh, gosh, there were several. Ken Frazier from Merck said that being an African-American in the C-suite or getting there was really, really hard. but it is nothing compared to being a woman. A.J. Banga from MasterCard told a story that to me illustrates the kind of universality of what we're talking about here, how what we're discussing really goes beyond gender. He is a Sikh, and he wears a turban, and he talked about how after 9-11, he got attacked. It was frightening for him to walk through the streets of, I can't remember what city, I don't believe it was New York. But that kind of hit me.

7:20Carlos Ghosn of Nissan talked about why he is so committed to bringing women up through the ranks of his organization. and part of it is that his mother, who was a superb student, was denied the opportunity to go on with her education because she was a girl. And that really moved him. So there are several stories for me. Andrea Jung of Avon, she was the CEO of Avon, and now I believe she's the executive chairwoman. She's hit the very top of her field, and she talked about how she would sit down in a meeting and people wouldn't believe that she was the leader of that organization. And she got a lot of press when she first stepped into that role.

8:17So, yeah, there were quite a few stories that really stuck with me. That's a great list. That's a great list. I want to shift gears slightly now and just ask a little bit about the mechanics of putting the issue together. This is an interesting question I think we got from some of the readers. How did you decide how to put the cover together? Wow, that is a great question. This was one of the most challenging covers I've ever worked on because we really wanted to defy expectations. This is a topic that makes a lot of people roll their eyes. And the other thing about this topic is, you know, our readership is mostly male.

8:59So what we wanted to do is figure out how to tell this story and how to sell it on the cover in a way that resonated with all of our community. And what we really tried to capture was this notion of secondary bias. So these are the words that we actually pulled them from the lead article. These are the ways that organizations or these are the ways that people in organizations kind of condemn the leadership behaviors of women. That they say that women are too emotional, that they're bossy or they're too nice. This is not the way that people talk about men who may behave exactly the same way, whatever prompted that description.

9:46So we caught that. I have to tell you, we must have gone through four or five different types of covers.

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10:55Well, and any feedback on the issue itself, now that it's been out for a little while? You know, it's funny. I've actually gotten quite a bit of feedback from young women who are readers. I had no idea we had so many young female readers, but I'm thrilled to hear it. A couple of whom, I had lunch with one yesterday who was quoting to me from Kathy Benko's article on how to sell to women, stuff that surprised her. She was not alone. Others have commented on how they feel the second generation bias and that no one had ever put words to it for them. So for them it made sense of something that had been kind of gnawing at them, but they weren't able to kind of describe it.

11:51Guys, you know, the one thing that people have brought up with me kind of across the board is the stories in the article, the ones I was quoting, the stories about Ken Frazier and AJ Banga, there are about seven or eight of them that we isolate and kind of highlight. Those really resonated with readers across the board for us. So it's the usual thing about making a point. If you can tell a story and you can put a face to it, it will resonate. So question about sort of where men come into this a little bit more. So it sounds, I guess what I'm asking is, when HBR focuses on women in leadership, we focus on women in leadership.

12:42When HBR talks about men in leadership, we usually just call that leadership. Where's our men in leadership cover? Is that what you're asking? Yeah, I mean, we see men as sort of the norm and women as sort of having a gender issue. You know, do you think we'd ever focus on men as a sort of unique class in themselves? Well, you know, that's a great question. Well, right now they are the norm. For better or worse, white men are the norm. And so we looked at women because we had a lot of information out there that we thought was interesting that we thought applied more broadly, that it wasn't just about gender, that if you read this package of articles, you might become more aware of bias toward people who aren't like you.

13:38And that's really, to me, the goal, to create the sensitivity toward the kind of bias that, in fact, holds back your organization and inhibits success. I mean that's really always the goal for us at HBR is to help people do what they do better and organizations thrive. So in that sense, you know, I guess we might do a leadership and men cover if we ever found something kind of interesting to say about it that was solely about men. Now any article that is about women in leadership is also about men in leadership because you people have to always draw the contrast, otherwise you don't have a story to tell.

14:22So every one of these articles is about men. And it's also about every kind of group that doesn't look like the group in power. So this is interesting because this is reminding me of one of the other questions that we got from Facebook, actually one of our Facebook readers. He or she, I actually don't know the gender of the person asking the question, asks, at At what point do we stop looking at this antiquated... This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. They can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

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15:39Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Equality concept. When we have none, when we're not burdened with inequality, because inequality hurts everyone. So that's when. I don't think it's any time soon, unfortunately. Yeah. One of the statistics, actually, I think we published on our website that really surprised me was that at the current rates of progress, It's something like 300 years until women are equal with men in the C-suites of Fortune 500 companies. Yeah. 300 years seems like a long time to wait. Well, I think that's one of those data points that is more sensational than true.

16:22I guess it'll probably...we might see that there's a tipping point. A tipping point. A tipping point here would be most welcome. You know, 20 years ago, had there been a Google Hangout, it wouldn't have been the two of us sitting here. You know, not just because you were barely born and I was still making my way up, but because, you know, women didn't do this sort of thing so much. But the world has changed a lot and it's going to continue to change. And it's not, you know, there's not one ladder for women anymore. There used to be. There used to be a women's VP job at many companies. It was tokenism in the 60s and in the 50s.

17:06But now I think that we've really come a long way in many businesses. We really are pulling people in based on their qualifications and their abilities rather than the way they look, where they went to college and so forth. Well, so then here is a question. Is there one piece of this debate that you would kind of like to see people set aside, maybe to focus on a different piece of it? Is there something you think we've just talked to death and we know the answer and move on, or just some piece of it that's gotten too much air time maybe at the expense of a different important issue that you'd like to see get more air time?

17:40Yeah, you know, I kind of get tired of the work-life balance question just because I'm not sure what new there is to say. It is a problem. It's an awful problem. And women bear a disproportionate amount of the burden. And how to figure it out, continue, you know, how can you do what you want to do as a parent, as a business professional? You know, it doesn't even need to be about parenting, you know? But how to do that, I feel that, you know, we've been out there with plenty of data, plenty of information, plenty of advice. So, I guess I'd like to put it to rest until we have something new to say and some new benefit to offer our community.

18:32Well, and then what about something you'd rather have us be talking about instead, some other undercover piece of this very much covered story. Oh, great question. An undercover piece of the story. Well, I guess, you know, I'd like the work-life balance if we're going to talk about it and any sort of conversation about diversity and inclusivity to include something about priorities because priorities are changing. and I see it generationally. You can't lure young people with money the way you could lure people in my generation with money, for example. I'd like to see us think about new work models and structures and incentives and rewards that help people kind of rise above the quotidian constraints of work, so that they can unleash themselves and unleash their talents and love what they do.

19:31That would be a great thing. And I think that that crosses gender boundaries and it crosses socioeconomic boundaries. I think it's easier to talk about when you're talking about people with money in organizations. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome.

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20:40...that are thriving, but there it is. And we had a question, a slightly different take on the question coming from one of our Google Plus fans. She was asking, as a woman and as a millennial, she says sometimes it feels like she tries to sort of lean in a bit and at the same time then it sort of gets a kind of a pushback when she does sort of stand up for herself. Oh, is she being bossy perhaps? Or maybe emotional or too nice. Well, she better not react with emotion. Yeah, I mean I think that's exactly what our authors were talking about in the article called Women Rising and they have a tremendous amount of research to back this up.

21:25What she's feeling is real and it's destructive. So I mean it really isn't just about the individual's development into leadership. It's about the whole organization that benefits when it has an inclusive culture. Well, and when we look at sort of the organization and the individuals, I know this has been a big part of the debate, and this is actually one of the questions we got online as well, is it, you know, is it Anne Rees-Latter or Sheryl Sandberg? Is it the companies or is it the women? Which one do you fix? Okay, so this is the part of the debate that drives me crazy. It's this drive to oversimplifying it.

22:05I would think both, I bet you anything that both Sheryl Sandberg and Anne-Marie Slaughter would say it's both. And I don't even know where you put the emphasis. I think they are a hand-in-hand kind of progress that the organizations have to fix themselves. At the same time, women have to fix themselves. And it's not going to happen on one track or the other. You have to have it happen on both.

22:38So that's where I actually also think the tipping point comes in. Because, you know, once we get used to seeing women behave as leaders and we start to react to them in a way that says, you know, excellent, go for it, and reward them for it, more of them start doing it, the whole organization changes. You know, we've seen it happen before as the world has become more inclusive. I think it will follow a similar path. And I do think that that debate is not going to help anyone. So one other question that we were getting, sort of how to get to the glorious future is, are there certain companies out there that we ran across and plan the issue together that really are doing this better than others?

23:26and maybe what are some of the practices that those companies are pulling in to really push the diversity issue forward? Well, the companies I mentioned when I was citing the leaders whose organizations really... Well, the leaders whose stories struck me are kind of the stars of an article called Leaders Who Make the Mix Work. I think that's what we ended up calling it. And there, they have, almost every one of them, you know, had a moment of reckoning, either in their childhood or, I'm trying to remember who it was, but it's a CEO who's, you know, a white guy who tells a story about how he was at an executive meeting, an executive off-site, and he's leading a conversation.

24:19and after one of the sessions, three of his female leaders walk up to him and say, do you realize that the point that Bob over there made that you agreed with with so much vigor, actually we each made it earlier in the session and you kind of ignored it. Real value shows up in reliability you don't have to second guess. Like a set of Firestone all-season tires. They're designed to deliver confidence-inspiring wet weather traction and a quieter ride, no matter the road, season after season. Firestone all-season tires. For durability, you can count on. Just like people count on you. Firestone. Always dependable.

25:07Since 1900. That for him was a moment of reckoning. And there are steps that each of these organizations have taken. It's not cookie cutter, but it has something to do with recognizing the problem, with educating the organization about the problem, of actually focusing on helping women develop. And in the process, this gets back to the theme of our conversation. It's not just women. When they do this with women, they are doing it with all people. So there is a recognition and an embrace of new ideas and a new way of doing things and an explicit goal of including people who aren't, you know, who are in some way different from the usual leader.

26:08And it's also, and this I think is the most important thing, it starts at the top and and it continues all the way down through the organization. It's not a once-and-done initiative. It is CEO-led, and it is CEO-driven in the sense that he or she does not let go of it. You know, it comes up in meetings. Maybe they measure against it. Maybe they incentivize, I hate to use the word, but there it is, their leaders, their managers, to achieve certain kinds of metrics and goals. However, you know, different organizations do it differently. Well, and one of the sort of interesting, I think, contributions, I think that in my impression, I'd be curious to know if it's also your impression, that we've tried to make at HBR, not just in this issue, but in every time we've written about diversity, is focusing on how it actually benefits the bottom line of the company.

27:06Absolutely. Absolutely. So, I mean, was there anything, just any pieces you've worked on in this issue or in other issues that might, you know, really drive it home? The one that stands out for me, I can go with it, is the Defend Your Research we published a couple years ago now, I think, by Anita Woolley, where she talked about how women actually make teams smarter. I mean, the bottom line is that diversity makes teams smarter, and you can measure that. So I think my hope is that once some of our readers who might be more skeptical read stuff like that, they see that there's really a benefit to doing it.

27:47Well, in fact, it comes up a lot in research into teamwork that diversity is really important, diversity of experience, diversity of perspective, diversity of all sorts, which kind of speaks to what you're saying. So we had, we actually have something coming up in the October issue, so the issue after this one, where, no, yeah, November, I get very confused. So here it September, it's a November issue where it talks about how, you know, when you make decisions, the best kind of feedback is the most diverse feedback and that the thing to be aware of, and this speaks to something we were discussing before, the thing to remember is that when you throw a question out to your network, you know, be it online, be it face to face, you need to be aware of your echo chamber.

28:45So your informal network in all likelihood looks and sounds and thinks like you. So you're going to get a lot of affirmation of what you already think and know. But if you make an effort to diversify your network and get people with different experience, different education, different ways of looking at the world and different ways of looking at the problem you're grappling with, you're going to get a more diverse set of feedback and in all likelihood make a smarter decision. And that's absolutely what we're talking about here. And there's a bottom line argument. There's a business case for diversity.

29:23Well, and in some cases, a lot of what you're talking about in terms of being open to new ways of doing things, being open to new kinds of leadership models, trying new things, evidence-based approaches, these are just things that good companies do. Right, right. You have to or else you get sclerotic and you break. So we write a lot about, we publish a lot of information about disruption. And one of the salient facts about companies that get disrupted is they're not looking for new ways to do things and they're not sensitive to the new ways that their competitors are doing things. They're not even sensitive to the new competitors coming into the field.

30:06And that involves being open, right? Right? So yeah, it actually is, I think this is a great point you're making. It suffuses all leadership thinking. So you know, that's why we think this is important. Yeah, yeah. And that actually brings me to what I think was the final question that we have time for today, unfortunately, which is one of the questions from our Google Plus followers today. Anyway, she asks, oh, I'm sorry, that's the different question that we already asked. She asks, is there something deeply sad about the fact that we still need to address this topic in 2013? Yeah, sure. It's sad, but who wants to focus on that?