Each of us is a collection of reality, lived experiences, learned knowledge, and our own set of illusions, myths, and mindsets. Many of those illusions, myths, and mindsets occur from a combination of confirmation bias and how we think the world works. Confirmation bias is basically our need to confirm that which we already believe about someone or something. It is not “seeing is believing,” but rather “believing is seeing.” We give more weight to evidence, impressions, or facts that are consistent with our held beliefs, and attribute less importance and credence to that which is contrary to what we already believe.

Think about what many people assume about women drivers, for example. If someone does something stupid in the car in front of you and you see the driver is a woman, you might think, “Of course there's a woman behind the wheel!” You didn't notice the five men who were responsible for idiotic driving in front of you at other times.

Basically, illusions, myths, and mindsets make up parts of what we believe, some of which may be true, and others are simply an accumulation of what we have heard from others (such as from parents, on social media, or what our religion instructs us). They are what we use to justify how we treat or think about someone, and what gets affirmed or rewarded based on these beliefs.

This chapter will explore several illusions: the myth of meritocracy, the illusion of inclusion, thinking that intent is the same as impact, and the ways we confuse effort with outcome. For example, I have never met a leader in an organization who has admitted, “I got to the top of this company because I was subtly advantaged.” Nobody says that. Instead, you often hear, “I got to the top because this is a meritocracy, and only the best make it.” This is unfortunately a myth and a mindset. Within every organization there are subtle ways that some people receive advantage and others may be disadvantaged or not given positive efforts to help them prosper in their careers.

Here are some other myths:

• I believe in meritocracy and fortunately that's what happens here. We recruit talented people, give them opportunities, and then they earn their promotions and advancement.

As we will see in this book, there are conscious and unconscious gate keepers that speed up or slow down people's success. Among them are assumptions about competency, uneven assignment of jobs and projects, differing levels of feedback, and the human urge to favor those like ourselves.

In one American company we held focus groups with four groups: White American men, women, American minorities, and non‐Americans, asking whether they believed the organization was a meritocracy. After viewing the results, I went back to management and said there was some great news. One of the four groups thought the company was a meritocracy! You might be able to figure out which of the groups thought that (White American men). The other three did not experience the same feeling of meritocratic treatment.

Another organization did interviews and found similar results. The majority group, with close to 100% agreement, saw the company as a meritocracy. The women did not, as they felt they did not receive the same resources; the Black employees felt they weren't given the same opportunities to advance; the LGBTQ members did not feel like they could be comfortable as their authentic selves.

• If people just worked harder, made fewer mistakes, and asked for what they wanted or needed, they would be successful.

Research has shown that nondominant groups have their mistakes overscrutinized.¹ I remember President Vigdís Finnbogadóttir of Iceland, who was the first woman president in the world, telling me that she was never able to make mistakes because the press was quick to point them out. Diverse groups may not be sponsored in ways as often as the dominant groups are. The over‐scrutiny of mistakes feeds into the feeling that there might be more risk when sponsoring diverse groups because they might fail more. It becomes a vicious cycle, which ultimately leads to disadvantaging some while advantaging others, just the opposite of a meritocracy.

• Often when minorities or women complain about an issue that has occurred in the workplace, such as not getting a promotion or assignment, the man or non‐minority may think, “Well that's happened to me, so it probably has nothing to do with your being a woman or minority.” To take it a step further, some will think, “I reflect that this has also happened to me, but I was able to rise above a particular disadvantaged moment, so you should be able to also,” little realizing that it may happen to some only a few times in their life. But others may experience this much more often, regularly and repeatedly. That is often why what we see as a one‐off simple mistake or comment is something that another person has heard or experienced frequently and tediously. For example, you might be praised for being very articulate in a speech. To some this seems a compliment and a positive reinforcement. But to some who hear “you are so articulate” often, it might suggest that the listener is surprised that someone “like you” would be able to be articulate at all.

People can confuse a one‐time situation that has happened to them with a multiple and frequent occurrence that happens to others. Kendall Wright, CEO of Entlechy Training and Development, identifies this as “possibility and frequency.” For example, any one of us may be searched randomly during airport security screening. But the men named Mohammed whom I have asked about this say they are randomly searched 99% of the time. I may expect to be randomly searched occasionally when I travel, but for Mohammed it is a very frequent occurrence. Mohammed and I live in different worlds.

So those who have experienced a “sometimes or one‐time roadblock” do not realize that the “one time” for them is actually a frequent set of experiences for another. The result is that the one who experiences something infrequently minimizes the experience of those for whom these situations are replicated time and again.

WUSA, a TV station in Washington, D.C., performed a sting in 2013 in which a White man hailed a cab and then a Black man hailed a cab. The study found that cab drivers were “25% less likely to pick up a Black passenger than a White passenger.”² (Taxi drivers also disproportionately failed to pick up people with disabilities.) The year before that, the Los Angeles Times reported the same dynamic for White and Black men hailing a cab.³

The irony is that we can all relate to having a one‐time experience of a cab not picking us up. But we don't necessarily know what it is like to have a cab pass you by five times more frequently. I remember a U.S. Department of Justice lawyer who was Black say to me that if he was dressed in a suit with a briefcase, he might try hailing a cab. If he was in jeans, he never even exerted himself to flag a cab, to avoid the frustration and indignity of the situation.

THE MYTH OF MERITOCRACY

According to Linda Hill, a professor at Harvard Business School, “Two people start at the same place upon hiring. One gets regular critical feedback, stretch assignments, mentoring, and sponsoring, and the other does not. After five years of time, there is a real performance difference between the two.”

I worked with one financial institution that assigned research to the analysts in their department with the belief that the assigning managers were providing similar opportunities for all. Once we actually looked at who received assignments, it became clear that the male analysts got the large capital manufacturing companies, and the female analysts were given the small to medium capital service companies. Prior to showing the managers these results, they had been confident that assignments were being given out fairly, with everyone receiving equal opportunities.

For an organization, solving this lack of meritocracy starts with awareness that there may be a problem. This may come from anecdotes, surveys, or individual complaints. Next comes moving beyond the anecdote to the collection of data to identify whether, in this case, the assignment process is fair or not. If uneven treatment presents itself in the data, those doing the assignments must be shown the proof. (We are human and tend to believe we are fair, but many don't realize what is actually happening.) Processes must change with the input of the assignors and the assigned. Included in the possibility of change may be the use of data analytics or algorithms that remove some of the discretion being applied unevenly. Ongoing evaluation is then essential to ensure that the effort creates the desired outcome.

Here are a few warning signals that your organization may need to reevaluate its processes and mindsets to create a more robust meritocracy for all:

• Does your recruiting or evaluations use the term “culture fit”? That's often code for “looks like me” or “has a shared background, which I favorably advantage.”
• Is there verifiable data that shows equal pay in your organization? Statistically, even when women and men work the exact same job, men earn more. Much has been written about this disparity. As Emma Goldberg states in the New York Times, “That's partly because women are less likely to negotiate for higher pay and more apt to be penalized when they do.”⁴ She also quotes C. Nicole Mason, who said, “Instead of being shrewd, a woman negotiating is seen as complaining.” What do the statistics in your organization tell you?
• What is the definition of someone being “ready for promotion” versus “not quite ready”? What does the pipeline data show? Is the amount of time it takes to get promoted different for differing groups? McKinsey & Co research indicates that is the case.⁵
• Do you know who is being mentored and who is being sponsored? Mentoring is advising with little at stake, while sponsoring is advocating for another with your own reputation at stake.
• Do you assume everyone is being heard equally? How do you know that?
• Who feels like they belong and are included and who doesn't?
• Do some people have an underlying feeling that diversity means groups that were historically in power are now at a disadvantage? This is often heard by some as “Where are the programs for men?” Maybe there do need to be programs or efforts for all to ensure better leadership, management, and development. But one could argue that actions or programs that help dominant‐group men are already in place and include over‐sponsorships, uniquely better work assignments, more detailed and focused feedback, greater bonding opportunities with senior leaders, being over‐heard or under‐scrutinized, under‐interrupted, and allowing confidence to camouflage lack of competence. These may be acting as subtle programs that have the effect of advancing the men.
• A comment is often made that an organization just can't find enough diverse candidates, which usually means they are fishing from a designated set of ponds, rather than thinking more broadly about where candidates can be found. Or they may decide on a certain criterion for a qualified candidate and then change that criterion when someone they already want to hire comes along.

  As Brogiin Keeton, a senior women lawyer in the financial world who identifies as Black, stated as she talked to me in 2021, “You have to put your money where your mouth is.” More than once, she's been asked to help recruit someone diverse to a team. “For a role that fit the credentials and to increase their diversity. I found a Black woman, who did the exact thing they wanted, was in the exact year span, role, all of it. And they say, ‘Actually, we feel like somebody a little more senior would be better.' And I'm thinking, ‘You should have told me that because I could have found that too.' It's those individual decisions that people make when they think they're in a vacuum that add up.”

• Tracking systems for promotions, assignments, feedback, retention, and attrition are lacking or absent.

If your organization has any of these “symptoms,” I suggest taking a Meritocracy Stress Test. After the global financial crisis of 2007–2009, bank regulators in the United States and other countries implemented what is known as the bank stress test to ensure that banks had enough capital to withstand an economic or financial crisis. It provides a snapshot into the hypothetical health of a financial institution and its ability to prevent failure, maintain trust, and provide protection to consumers. The annual test outlines categories in a few key areas for evaluation, including level of capital, credit risk, market risk, and liquidity risk. It provides a way for banks to go beyond saying they are financially sound to proving that they truly are.

I propose a similar test for any organization that considers itself a meritocracy. I call it the Meritocracy Stress Test. It is an opportunity for a company to discover whether it is at risk of not being the diverse, inclusive, fair, and equitable workplace it purports to be. To date, every organization I have worked with proclaims it is a meritocracy: the bedrock for values, mission statements, and self‐perception. But to prove that shining assertion, there are many questions to ask.

For each of the following propositions, rate your company 1–5, with 1 meaning you haven't focused on this issue, and 5 meaning your organization is completely cognizant of the dynamic and is acting upon it:

1. Engaging in focus groups or surveys with specific members of the company. As mentioned earlier, the framework of the Elephant and the Mouse holds here. We must get better at understanding how everyone in the organization is experiencing the workplace and not assume we have a shared set of experiences. Focus groups, surveys, one‐on‐one conversations, and listening to employee resource groups are all tools that need to become part of the ongoing lexicon of an organization.
2. Analyzing your data. McKinsey reports that women and other underrepresented groups do get promoted, just at a slower rate than their White male counterparts.⁶ Is that true in your company? HR will have the data, so ask them to show you what the speed of promotion looks like for different segments of the company. How many women and people of color are just “not ready” to be promoted? If necessary, hire a data translator who can figure out how to mine the data you have based on the questions that need to be asked.

   Study data on pay gaps and bonus gaps. What does that tell you? Check gender gap reports, such as the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report. It can give you a sense of your country rank and potentially be a reflection of corporate performance overall.

   Another area to examine is personnel evaluations: Are women more likely to be criticized for their communication styles than men? One study by Kieran Snyder⁷ found that 76% of women's evaluations critiqued them as aggressive and sharp‐elbowed, compared to only 2% of men's evaluations.

   What does your data show? Even if you have a myriad of programs on DEI, as you assess, don't confuse your efforts around diversity and inclusion with real, measurable outcomes.

   

3. “De‐bias” processes at your organization. Whether biases are implicit, unconscious, or conscious, it may be difficult to overcome them, but processes can be de‐biased. For example, look at how your company hires and promotes its staff. Check entry job requirements, review past interviews, and consider how you're measuring the culture fit for potential hires. Go back and look at those who were not given a job offer or a promotion. If the issue of culture fit came up, it might mean there is a bias toward those who are like you and perhaps your organization is less diverse as a result.

   “I think that changing people's unconscious bias is incredibly difficult,” says Keeton. “I believe very strongly in processes, because I think processes are the things that ultimately change people's behaviors because they modify expectations.”

   Ask yourself whether confidence is being equated to competence. Again, research shows that men believe they are above average, regardless of their abilities, inherently putting them at an advantage when those hiring or promoting conflate confidence and competence. Evaluate job performance reviews or hiring results and see if there is a gender correlation between observed traits of confidence and promotion (or hiring). It is not that women don't think they are above average—about 59% do and to some extent we all have a glorified view of ourselves—but it seems that some funhouse mirrors are more distorted than others.⁸

   Herminia Ibarra, the Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School, gave a lecture for EDGE in 2021. Professor Ibarra's research indicates that some people get the benefit of the doubt in what they do, while others will elicit cautious concern about their performance. In the Elephant and Mouse world, the Elephant usually gets that assumption of competence and benefit; the Mouse confidence is questioned and seen as more likely to fail. Professor Ibarra sees that women are over‐mentored and under‐sponsored, given that sponsorship is a more personal, higher‐stakes advocacy action. She believes that the more difference there is between two people, the longer it takes to develop a relationship and a comfort with the abilities of the other.

4. Checking your myths and mindsets at the door. As you read the following, reflect on how an organization might believe these statements and what the implications of that might be for different employees:
   • My company is a meritocracy. Only the best rise to the top, getting the promotions and opportunities they deserve.
   • We have developed and continue to develop programs to help underrepresented groups, including employee resource groups; have specialized training; a designated person for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts; and highly touted inclusivity statements by senior leaders. Therefore, we must be a fair and meritocratic organization.
   • If people only worked harder and asked for what they needed, they would be successful. Everyone gets feedback on their performance and support when they need it.
   • Some of the challenges people from underrepresented groups complain about have happened to me in my career, but I overcame them.
   • Much more support is being provided to underrepresented groups, and it is now putting White males at a disadvantage.
   • Privilege does not exist in a merit‐based organization; the playing field is level. Everyone takes an ownership role in making sure that DEI is grounded within everything we do and becomes a touchpoint with as much force as if it were a safety issue.
   • Confident people are more competent. The person who always speaks up with their ideas is the person who shows leadership.

THE TEST RESULTS

The numbers that you rated yourself on a 1–5 scale (with 5 being best and 1 meaning a need to review and reflect about the four elements of the Meritocracy Stress Test) can help you tell the story about results, whether people feel included or not. Organizations use data all the time to determine market forces, sales, consumer reactions to products, and quality of their products and services. Data for diversity and inclusion is in its infancy, in comparison. My argument is that the scrutiny and analysis we do within other functions must be used to ensure the outcomes we profess to want for diversity, equity, and inclusion. The leader who commits to DEI will prioritize wanting to know what their data shows.

Wanting to be a meritocracy and actually being one are two different things. The first is an aspiration; the second requires a series of questions and ongoing searching and knowledge and then actions that have impact. Meritocracy is one of those conclusionary words. We describe a firm as meritocratic only if it has all the real workings of a fair organization. The word requires proof and not merely the spoken or written promise of it. Declarations are false flags. Take the Meritocracy Stress Test and honestly evaluate your score.

THE ILLUSION OF INCLUSION

Cheryl Kaiser, a professor at the University of Washington, coined the phrase the Illusion of Inclusion (with a strong nod to the work of Patricia Pope, CEO of Pope and Associates). As has been observed previously, her extensive research has shown that the very presence of diversity efforts may give some the illusion that the organization is truly fair, even in the face of evidence that it is not.

Professor Kaiser states, “Implementation of diversity initiatives may ironically work against the (stated) goals of these initiatives by 1) leading people to assume an organization is less discriminatory against minority groups and more discriminatory against majority groups, 2) leading to perceptions of exclusion among members of advantaged groups that can prompt backlash and 3) leading to biased assumptions about the competency of members of disadvantaged groups.…One unintended consequence (of diversity efforts) is decreased sensitivity to unfair hiring practices that disadvantage women or minorities.…The mere presence of a diversity initiative also makes Whites and men less likely to identify hiring disparities as unfair.”⁹

Frank Dobbin, professor of sociology at Harvard University, has found that young White men feel that a company's announcement and affirmation of diversity training programs is a threat to their own career.¹⁰ The perception is that they will be marginalized and disadvantaged in the face of programs that seek to level the playing field. To them, these programs were a take away, not a remedy.

I remember a fascinating study that asked elementary school teachers to call on boys and girls equally, because there had been reporting that teachers were unknowingly calling on boys more than girls. As best they could, the teachers consciously asked girls and boys equally for responses. After a month or so, the boys were asked what it was like. Their response? The boys felt that girls were getting all of the attention. In their minds, this 50/50 attention was seen as taking something away from them, because they had normalized 60/40 or 70/30 as equal. Insider Higher Ed journal reported in June 2021 that males speak 1.6 times more than females in the college classroom.¹¹ One wonders if the imbalance is noticed or addressed.

It is crucial that organizations track the impact of diversity efforts and do program evaluations on how these affect hiring, retention, promotion, efforts, perception of inclusion, belonging, and meritocracy. Companies need to message that systems can be made more fair for all and use the technology and other known tools, such as standardized interview techniques, assignment monitoring, and behavior nudges to accomplish that. Continuous engagement among dominant and nondominant groups can reduce archetype beliefs about who others are. Teaching how to be allies, wing persons, and active bystanders can give people a sense they are positively providing change in the workplace without the negative feelings that bias trainings can provoke.

MISTAKE EFFORT FOR OUTCOME

A big mistake in the field of diversity and training is the lack of follow‐up to see whether actual change occurs, considering the large amount of an organization's time and expense these efforts consume. The efficacy of diversity initiatives is rarely tracked, Kaiser observes.¹² Companies would never spend millions on marketing products or introducing services without looking at the return on their investments. As with leadership training, diversity and inclusion training often does not get the same rigorous attention to outcomes.

Also, by not measuring outcomes, it leaves the organization at risk for actually not knowing what it wants as its objectives. Organizations frequently introduce program after program, such as employee resource groups, donations to minority arts organizations, mentor programs, or high potential initiatives. Each is useful in its own right, but it is an accumulation of efforts that may not align with or abet the overall mission or impact to create a more diverse, inclusive, and meritocratic business. This is reminiscent of an old adage, “If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.”

Here are some measurable actions to correct for diversity efforts that do not meet the goals sought after. These actions are a way to avoid merely making companies appear responsible or mistakenly believe they are doing the right thing, as shared by Professor Dobbin:

1. Recruit from diverse colleges and professional associations.
2. Offer mentorship to everyone in the organization but also understand the differing consequences of mentoring versus sponsoring.
3. Hire a responsible person or staff to oversee DEI strategies and measure results. Make sure everyone understands their ownership role.
4. Use employee resource groups as one mechanism to hear a collective voice.
5. Train for empathy and opportunities for interaction with different groups, with exercises like writing a few sentences imagining the distinct challenges for someone whose life experiences are substantially different than yours.
6. Create specific metrics (such as year over year numbers that reflect a closing of the meritocracy gap) and then commit to change that can be measured.
7. Validate the efforts of DEI by those in authority and present it as part of the essential strategy and mission of the organization.
8. Reinforce efforts; do not just rely upon one‐off programs.

In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman talks about cognitive illusions and how difficult they are to block. “We would all like to have a warning bell that rings loudly whenever we are about to make a serious error, but no such bell is available, and cognitive illusions are generally more difficult to recognize.…The voice of reason may be much fainter than the loud and clear voice of an erroneous intuition.…The upshot is that it is much easier to identify a minefield when you observe others wandering into it than when you are about to do so.”¹³

WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY IS IT? THE SEED AND THE SOIL

Recent discussions about women's careers have focused on the apparent divide between what women should do to ensure their careers go well (Lean In) and what institutions need to do to change policies to help women ensure their careers can be possible, the latter often framed with the question of whether women can have it all. The debate seems to be about which is more important: Does the woman need to be fixed, or is the institution responsible for ensuring policies that support everyone for success?

My response? As professor and author Deborah Tannen once said, that's like asking, “Which line is more important in a rectangle, the long line or the short line?”¹⁴ In a rectangle, both the long and the short lines are equally essential. So too in careers for women, it is impossible to disaggregate between the individual and the institution. Again, I call this reality the Seed and the Soil: a 50/50 career deal. (I am grateful to my colleague Aynesh Johnson, managing director at Goldman Sachs, who has helped me frame this issue.)

The institution, company, or organization is the Soil. It has a 50% responsibility to make sure supervisors, managers, and leaders develop and maintain awareness that men and women have different approaches (as do other historically underrepresented groups such as Blacks, Asians, the disabled, different cultures, and so on). Most importantly, the institution must give tools to those who lead, and manage these tools to work with those who are different and come from both dominant and nondominant groups. Organizations should not strive for heterogeneity and diversity if the tools and programs are not there to make it work.

On the other hand, who cares most about one's own career? Aside from one's mother, the individual cares most about their career. The individual has a 50% responsibility as the Seed to have the skills, tools, awareness, planning, and personal development to ensure their career goes well.

One example would look like this:

The issue is communication styles. It is known that men and women, and often other cultures, learn through societal example as they grow up to communicate somewhat differently. Not everyone is different, but the cohorts probably speak with slightly different mannerisms.

Women, for example, may use ritual questioning to demand something. Many men realize that when their female partner says, “Do you want to stop for a cup of coffee?” what the woman really means is “Stop now because I want a cup of coffee.”

In the workplace, a woman (the Seed) may ask her manager, “Do you think I should get a promotion?” The male manager (the Soil) hears a question and says “No.” The Soil has a responsibility to have learned that this is known as a ritual question and to treat it as such. The Seed has a responsibility to realize that there are other speaking frameworks besides ritual question and that she may need to use a different approach, given her intended audience.

This is but a small example of a situation that abounds in the workplace. Yes, women should lean into their careers and understand how to stay engaged if they off‐ramp for a time, speak up, ask for their assignments, get critical feedback, seek promotions, state their accomplishments, and learn more ways to behave other than just those understood through societal norms. It is 50% their responsibility to stretch themselves and get out of their comfort zones.

But there is a similar 50% responsibility from the institution, as represented by the managers, supervisors, and leaders, to be taught and to understand the implications of their requirements for long hours of face time, for the unconscious negative career consequences of doing telework, flex work, or hitting the career pause button. They must understand exactly how a double bind works and how they may be engaging in one (assertive men versus aggressive women), and to learn what disarming mechanisms are, including ritual apology, question, mitigation, modesty, humility, and smiling.

The institution has to make managers far more aware of how “like” gravitates to “like,” how people bond with those who are similar to them, and to mitigate the consequences of this in hierarchical organizations where rewards are given out unequally. The organization, if it is going to state that its goal is to have a diverse workforce for its innovation and creativity, then must teach managers to appreciate that some people have no trouble stating how good and accomplished they are, and some people have a background that taught them not to brag.

Organizations teach their employees how to handle diverse technical products and diverse ways to generate revenue. They know that nourishing excellence in employees requires a fertile soil. Organizations provide constant attention, metrics, training, examples, behavior modifications, penalties, rewards, and recognition when it comes to issues like safety or product purity. Having an organization filled with diverse individuals also requires that same level of rich soil.

The individual will only flower if there is a strong seed, which they must come to provide to the organization to make their own careers blossom.

THE SEED AND THE SOIL: IT TAKES BOTH

We all need ways to monitor ourselves relying upon our illusions, myths, and fables about who others are. We need humans and nonhumans to help us to discern between what we think is real and what is truly reality. The first step in overcoming the blind spots of our illusions, myths, mindsets, and unfounded beliefs is to realize they all exist.

This is about decades of conditioning. Decades in our lifetime, but centuries in the scope of our country and our society that predisposes you to make certain assessments and to make them extremely rapidly.

I've conceived of a model that I call the Bond assessment, as in James Bond with his quick reflexes, inspired by research that suggested that in 7/1000 of a second, we critique a stranger on their physical attributes. In another four‐tenths of a second, we formulate an action plan on how to deal with a stranger. Now, most of us don't feel intense in thousands of a second. That is half a heartbeat. Not knowing this, people really believe they just need to have a positive attitude. No, you need to understand what you're up against, and then hold yourself accountable for those decisions.

Assumptions lead to conclusions. Conclusions lead to decisions. And decisions have consequences.