5

Include Diverse Perspectives

When the late and much-missed Ed Gilligan was president of American Express, he made clear to senior executives that they should 1) pick three up-and-comers to sponsor and 2) make sure that two of these protégés didn’t look like them. It became known as “Gilligan’s one-plus-two rule.”

What lay behind Gilligan’s rule was a savvy insight. Gilligan was saying, sure, sponsor one high-performing younger talent who reminds you of yourself—a “mini-me,” so to speak. But with the other two picks, mix it up. Reach across the divides of gender, generation, and culture to find high performers who bring to the table knowledge, skill sets, life experiences, and contacts that you lack—and that you and your organization need. Gilligan understood that when leaders build a diverse portfolio of protégés, sponsorship’s power multiplies.

In other words, as I discussed in chapter 2, the best protégés are those who are high performers, can deliver loyalty, and provide a value add—and that value add will often be difference.

Unfortunately, looking for difference in a protégé isn’t as common as it should be. CTI data shows that only 23 percent of sponsors look for a protégé who has attributes that they personally lack. Among boomers, who are most likely to be at the very top of organizations, the number is only 14 percent.

This insufficient attention to the value of difference extends to race: 53 percent of whites, 49 percent of blacks, and 40 percent of Hispanics are sponsoring, as their primary protégé, someone of their own race or ethnicity. This preference of sponsors for their own kind is simply a reflection of our segregated society. CTI survey data shows that fully 41 percent of white employees do not have an immediate social network that includes black, Hispanic, and Asian individuals.

Sponsorship is a powerful tool to break down barriers and expand networks and capabilities, both for the individual leader and for the enterprise. When you explicitly set out to include protégés who come from a different background, have a different identity, or bring a different skill set to the table, the benefits can be tremendous. Talent pools and growth markets are increasingly diverse and an inclusive portfolio of protégés can turbocharge a leader’s journey.

Include Transformative Skills and Sensitivity

When Kevin Lord took the helm of the Fox News HR department at the start of 2017, he had his work cut out for him: the network faced high-profile allegations of sexual harassment and a class-action lawsuit alleging racial discrimination.¹ The atmosphere in parts of the organization was tense, to say the least.

To change the workplace environment in the minds of both current and prospective employees, Lord wanted to rebuild the HR department and transform the people culture at Fox News. In particular, he wanted to create a workplace where women and people of color would feel welcome, safe, and eager to contribute.

Lord, a fifty-something white man, needed allies to fulfill that goal. “I knew from a cultural standpoint,” he says, “that I needed colleagues who could help me bridge the gap. I needed to bring in some people who looked different than me, who brought a different perspective, and who also signaled that at Fox News there are now different types of HR people.”

Given Fox News’ brand at the time, attracting talented women or people of color to the team wasn’t going to be easy. But Lord knew at least one great prospect: Marsheila Hayes, a social media–savvy young black woman, a top performer in HR at another media giant, Gannett.

He called her—and got, at first, a definite maybe.

“When he called me up and said, ‘I may have an opportunity at Fox,’” Hayes recalls, “my response was, ‘Um, I don’t know. I don’t know about Fox.’”

“But,” she says, “I took the job, because I trusted him as a leader. I still do.”

How did this bond of trust, crossing generation, gender, and race, come to be? It began in 2012, when Lord too was at Gannett, as its head of HR.

“At Gannett,” Lord says, “we had this talent development program, and we had guest presenters, and one day Marsheila, who was very junior, just a few years out of college, was asked to introduce the company’s CEO. She did a fabulous introduction, funny, humorous, graceful. She just corralled the room, commanded and controlled it, while talking about the CEO in the CEO’s presence! I said, I want to know her.”

At about the same time, Lord instituted a “reverse mentorship” program, in which a senior person partnered with a junior one who would teach the senior person digital skills—a big gap in Lord’s own skill set. He chose Hayes to be his “reverse mentor,” and, as he’d hoped, she offered him a great deal of insight into social networks and digital platforms, and her insights were actionable. For example, she helped Lord find a tech company to partner with, so Gannett could build virtual recruiting programs at universities.

Hayes also led Gannett’s first virtual career fairs, which boosted recruitment not just among college graduates, but also among military veterans and people of color. She also increased the social media following of Gannett careers across Twitter and Facebook by 87 percent and 94 percent and chaired the company’s first employee resource group for women.

Just as Hayes delivered for Lord, he delivered for her. As she recalls, “Kevin asked me, ‘Within HR are there any areas that you haven’t had experience in yet that you’d like to get exposure to? If so I can set up some shadowing opportunities for you.’ In addition, when there were new and exciting projects going on, he would be very open to just adding me to the project team as an observer or as someone who could offer some insights from my place in the business. And that helped significantly to keep me on my toes and thinking strategically, not just about my little area of HR, but about the function in general.”

Once they become comfortable with each other professionally, it was natural for the relationship to evolve into a collegial friendship. This closer connection very much centered on his kids and her career.

“Whenever I talked with Kevin about having a virtual career fair or a Skype session with one of the colleges,” Haynes says, “I would ask, ‘Would your son Zack like to attend something like that, where he’d learn about the Whitman School at Syracuse through a one-on-one Skype session?’ And Kevin would appreciate the invitation and convey it to Zack. Or I would ask his opinion about a webinar and tell him that one of its advantages was that it would allow us to record and send it out to students who weren’t able to be there in person. And he’d come right back to me with ‘I like that. Then they could share it with me as a parent, and I could see it too.’”

His interest was authentic. Lord’s children really were looking at colleges and careers, and given the fact Hayes was twenty years younger than Lord, it made sense that he would seek her advice on what his children could access and what they should be looking for. A little later on in their friendship, he asked her whether she knew recent alumni in his children’s chosen fields whom they could talk to—which she did and happily made the connections.

Since Lord trusted Hayes enough to ask her advice, she returned the favor and asked his thoughts on her big life debate at the time: Should she go to graduate school? Was it a good experience? If so, which one? What had he gotten out of his graduate school experience? Did he know anyone she could talk to? He responded with the same thoughtfulness that she had given him and his children.

“That was something that I really appreciated about him,” she says. “It wasn’t just a matter of, ‘Oh, yeah, go to grad school. Everyone should have a master’s degree.’ He really looked at it as: ‘If you want to be successful, this would be a great opportunity for you because of A, B, and C, but this is the due diligence that you need to do, and don’t just look at the academics. Really examine the worth of the professional network this degree feeds into and how the school would help you access it. Also take a hard look at how this degree would add value to your career going forward.’”

Hayes ended up deciding to get her master’s at Georgetown, which she did in the evenings, while still performing at her customary, exceptional level at Gannett. It was a great experience.

This growing personal trust between Lord and Hayes deepened the trust that they already shared at work. When Gannett changed health benefits in a way that led to some employee discontent, Lord felt comfortable enough with Hayes to lean on her—it was Hayes whom Lord counted on, even though he was the head of HR and she was very junior—to give him insights into how employees were really feeling.

“It was like truth serum,” he says. “You get to a senior level in an organization and people don’t want to tell you the truth. They want to tell you what they think you want to hear. Marsheila didn’t do that. She told me what I needed to hear. Not naming names but telling me how people in general were talking about the changes.”

When Gannett split into two businesses, Lord and Hayes ended up in different companies. But they continued to stay in touch, and when two years after that Lord left to become head of HR at Fox News, the two had an established level of trust that enabled Lord to reach out to Hayes—and that enabled Hayes to say yes.

At Fox, Hayes’s title is director of campus programs and diversity outreach, but that only hints at her value to Lord. She’s his point person for working with the plaintiffs in many of the lawsuits that the network is facing. He’s also tasked her with leading investigations into several accusations, and to support that, he assigned her to work with the CFO on the design of updated policies in this area.

All that visibility has been a big plus for Hayes but it has also helped Lord put out fires. The fact that she is a high-profile black woman is important. As he puts it, “There are a lot of diverse people who feel comfortable coming to her, but if it was just me, a fifty-something white male, they might not act that way.”

Hayes has also built a new digital platform for diverse talent at Fox to share their stories internally; she’s revamped the firm’s college recruitment; she’s leading a new high-potential early-career program; and she’s massively increased Fox News’ participation in diversity conventions, such as that of the National Association of Black Journalists.

“We now have a substantial number of our leaders attend,” Hayes says of that convention, “decision makers and bureau chiefs who were recruiting on-site. And the feedback that we got from these leaders was incredible. ‘I really enjoyed the fact that I felt part of something,’ one told me. ‘I’ve always gone to this conference, but I never went as a Fox person.’ And I heard too from the association that participants in the convention were saying things like Wow, did you see all the people that were over at Fox? I met this great person at Fox. I didn’t even know they had opportunities there to work in roles like that.”

So, like any good sponsor-protégé relationship, this one has boosted the careers of both parties. It is based on performance, loyalty, and that extra value that came when Lord purposefully included in his circle someone so different from himself. It is also the result of these two talented people consciously investing in each other over the years.

“We’ve listened to the things that matter to each other and found ways in which we could add value to one another by leveraging the resources that we have, providing access to the people and resources that we’ve accumulated over time,” Hayes says. “It’s been really reciprocal in that way.”

Add a “New Muscle” to Leadership

We met Tiger Tyagarajan, CEO of Genpact, in chapter 3, where we looked at the payoffs that Saj, one of his longtime protégés has given him. Recently he took on someone new—and a big part of why he chose her is that her leadership style is so different from his.

The position Tyagarajan was looking to fill was very senior: a new chief strategy officer. Besides seeking out a top performer, he also wanted to use this hire to further two business imperatives: deepening and broadening his leadership team with a different approach and perspective; and giving Genpact a richer pool of top female talent.

Tyagarajan was proud of his top team, but he had noticed that two leadership types were dominant. “One is the executive who thinks, I know the answer, so let’s duke it out,” Tyagarajan says. “Most of the time he’s not even listening, but he’s loving the fight, speaking loud even if he drowns out other voices. The second is the executive who thinks, I have a view but it’s tough to express, so I’m going to sit back, and unless something comes up that deeply impacts me, I’m not going to get into this discussion.

“These guys do great jobs, but I wanted to add a new muscle. A good listener who has a strong point of view. Someone who’s stubborn around expertise and values, but is also willing to mold views based on new information and discussion.”

Women are more likely, Tyagarajan believed, to have that different style that he wanted, and even though his senior leadership team already had several women, he wanted more. “If there are just a few people who are different, they tend to go with the flow and try to blend in. You need a critical mass of women at the top before you really feel a difference,” he says.

Another woman in senior leadership would bring a further advantage. Genpact’s business depends on recruiting and retaining top talent, especially in technology, and a significant proportion of that talent is female. So, under Tyagarajan’s leadership, Genpact has started multiple initiatives for women, such as a program to help mothers stay in the workforce and another to help senior women who’ve taken a career break return to a high-level job.²

Such initiatives are stronger when there are role models to support them. The best way to prove that there’s no glass ceiling is if it’s already been broken. Hiring another woman into top management would send that message powerfully.

After months of searching, Tyagarajan landed on Katie Stein—who brought with her a superlative résumé, with skills honed at the highest levels of the Boston Consulting Group and Mercer. Three months after Stein joined Genpact, Tyagarajan assigned her to present strategy at the firm’s annual investor day. She knocked it out of the park, using the “muscle” that he’d sought.

“I would be thumping the table and saying, ‘This is what we’re going to do and this is the reason,’” he says. “She was understated, but specific, clear, and crisp. Afterward one of our biggest investors came up and said, ‘Where’d you find her? She was great!’ Then my chairman came to me and said, ‘She did a fabulous job.’”

Skilled sponsor that he is, Tyagarajan had worked hard to set Stein up for this success: blocking out time to meet with her, providing external coaching and other resources to support her, setting up “checkpoints” with the board for her ahead of the investor day, and advising her on handling certain individuals. And since this relationship is quite new, he was also keeping a close eye on her ability to absorb guidance.

So far, so good, and Tyagarajan is optimistic that the ways in which she’s different from most of top leadership—including himself—will deliver benefits beyond her specific role.

“By choosing a person with a different personality and leadership style, you make other people realize that you don’t need to be a bull in the china shop to be successful. They see that you can be collaborative and get things done, achieve your goals, without having to just double down on those things that you think you believe in. You can be open to testing your knowledge and beliefs.”

Tyagarajan is also confident that hiring her has helped strengthen his other initiatives to make Genpact an employer of choice for talented, ambitious women.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if five years from now, half my team are women,” he says. “It’s very possible. In fact I’d be shocked if it didn’t happen.”

Fill Knowledge Gaps

When in 2016 Eileen Taylor became head of global regulatory management for Deutsche Bank, she needed a top team on the ground, in many countries around the world. But in Deutsche’s home market, Germany, the head of the local team left soon after Taylor took up the reins. She was faced with finding someone she could trust who also knew German banking regulations inside and out. Her own career had been in New York and London, and she doesn’t speak German—both complicating factors.

“I believe in a transparent hiring process,” she says, “not just tapping your network. So I posted the role, I interviewed applicants, and although none of them excited me, I was on the verge of hiring one. Then someone in HR called me and said, ‘Do you know Friedrich Stroedter? If not, meet him.’”

Taylor didn’t have time to meet in person with Stroedter, who was already at Deutsche Bank in a different position. But they had a video call, where the depth of his country-specific knowledge and the strength of his local contacts—neither of which she had—blew her away.

She made him head of the unit and asked him to restructure it, an especially challenging task in Germany. “German employment law is strict and labor unions are powerful,” Taylor says. “But Friedrich has the knowledge of German labor laws to get all that done, while at the same time, he’s up to date on all the regulatory issues. He’ll tell me, under German stock exchange rules, that when so-and-so happens, we have to make a public statement in this way, tell the regulators in this manner, and here are the people we need to contact to get it done.”

To show her gratitude and strengthen his commitment to her and her team, Taylor then to bat for Stroedter. “I went on a big campaign to get him a raise. In a tough year for us, when no one was getting raises or bonuses, I got him a big salary hike, twenty percent. When I told him, his mind was blown.” But she did not stop there.

When Stroedter faced pressure from senior management, Taylor defended him. “I wrote a long, detailed email explaining how well he was doing,” she says. She had to write on his behalf, because his understated, introverted manner makes him at times poorly equipped to toot his own horn.

“I do things for him, just as he does so much for me,” she says.

It’s that kind of reciprocity—not just in effort, but also in complementary skill sets and backgrounds—that helps make sponsorship so powerful. In the playbook’s next step, we’ll look at how sponsors can raise the odds that this reciprocity will truly come to be.