How Women of Color Get to Senior Management
by Cindy Pace
Women of color are a force in the U.S. economy. They are projected to make up the majority of all women by 2060, which means they’ll also likely become the majority of the U.S. workforce. They also generate $1 trillion as consumers and $361 billion in revenue as entrepreneurs, launching companies at four times the rate of all woman-owned businesses.1
Developing a diverse leadership pipeline can benefit companies in all sectors. Firms with the most ethnically diverse executive teams were 33% more likely to outperform their peers on profitability, and those with executive-level gender diversity worldwide had a 21% likelihood of outperforming their industry competitors.2 A 2018 study of VC firms found that more-diverse teams had higher financial returns than their homogenous counterparts.3
The problem is that, to date, companies have not been great at promoting women of color to senior roles. And this isn’t for lack of ambition among them: According to Lean In and McKinsey & Company’s “Women in the Workplace” report, Black women are even more likely to aspire to hold a powerful position with a prestigious title than white women are. And yet Black women’s advancement into leadership roles has remained stagnant, even as the number of them in professional and managerial roles has increased.4
To increase diversity at senior executive levels, more must be known about one group in particular: women of color in midlevel leadership, who successfully developed and progressed beyond individual contributor and first-line management. What made their ascent possible? How did (or didn’t) managers play a role? And what factors helped or hindered advancement in their organization?
To look into these questions, I conducted a case study as part of my dissertation research involving 23 women of color at a Fortune 500 company.5 Sixteen women were interviewed and seven others participated in a focus group. The participants were American women whose racial and ethnic identity was African American/Black, Asian American, Latin/Hispanic, or any combination of these. They were employed in midlevel and upper-midlevel management positions in strategy, finance, marketing, legal, operations, and technology functions. Each had been employed for at least two years and had aspirations to move into executive management or senior leadership. They had all received at least one promotion or expansion of roles and responsibilities within management at their present company, and had been identified as having high leadership potential.
How to Get Ahead
The women in my sample were asked to think back on two defining career moments that best prepared them to advance. What were the critical events, and what lessons did they learn?
My analysis of the women’s responses, including their career decisions and the support they received from their managers and organization, led me to identify four main ways they developed and advanced toward their goals:
They aspired to power and influence
It might seem obvious, but the women in my sample had high ambitions to hold executive leadership roles with high status, power, and influence. This aspiration served as a motivator for them in making trade-offs to progress into top leadership, which could include anything from making a lateral move to changing companies to working long hours.
Navigating Intersectional Invisibility
BY ALEXIS NICOLE SMITH, MARLA BASKERVILLE WATKINS, JAMIE J. LADGE, AND PAMELA CARLTON
Black women continue to be sorely underrepresented in leadership roles in corporate America. Yet, despite this underrepresentation, a small subset have found success as leaders and played key roles in driving organizational change. We conducted in-depth interviews with 59 Black women executives across various industries who have occupied senior-level positions in U.S. corporations.
Our findings indicate that one main driver of their success was their ability to navigate the challenge of intersectional invisibility, or the tendency to be overlooked, disregarded, or forgotten due to one’s status as a member of two underrepresented and devalued groups.a To adapt to this invisibility, they employed different strategies based on their career stage.
Early Career: Self-Awareness
As they first grappled with feeling both visible and invisible at work, the women we interviewed said they developed a keen awareness of their unique, albeit disadvantageous, position. Despite this, these women were resilient and learned to craft their professional identities to align with others’ expectations for potential leaders. This often meant scrutinizing their appearance, style, and character, and carefully constructing professional images to help them “blend in” and disconfirm negative stereotypes.
Mara, a senior vice president in a pharmaceuticals company (all names have been changed to protect the interviewees’ privacy), told us, “I was Black, they were white … I was female, they were all male…. There was nothing that was an obvious similarity between us. I think I spent my early years trying to mask how different I really was.” For instance, every Sunday night Mara would memorize sports scores just in case she had to talk to someone about them.
Of course, in trying to mask their gender and race, many of our interviewees felt a diminished sense of authenticity that became emotionally taxing and costly. Mara eventually gave up on feigning interest in sports. Instead, she began focusing on building relationships with colleagues based on shared interests and experiences such as family and travel. “Nobody can accept and like me if they don’t know me,” she said.
Mid-Career: Strategic Risk-Taking
Research suggests that women and minorities are often tested in leadership roles by being disproportionately given risky or precarious assignments, a phenomenon referred to as the “glass cliff.”b Although the glass cliff tends to be positioned as negative, most of the women we interviewed viewed risky roles as strategic opportunities to overcome their invisible outsider status and prove their worth as leaders.
Some women had to fight others’ low expectations of their skills and abilities. Pilar, an executive vice president in consumer products, told us that her glass-cliff roles helped disprove the executives who thought she wouldn’t be able to handle the job: “I felt it bought me some organizational credibility.”
Those who opted out of risky assignments did so primarily when it violated their personal values and beliefs, or when they assessed that they lacked the necessary resources and support for success. Fear of failure was not central to their decision making. In other words, rather than saying, “I can’t do that,” the women in our sample were more likely to say, “I won’t do that.” In such cases, they were likely to leave their organizations.
Senior Level: Hypervisibility for Impact
By the time they reached the apex of their careers, the women told us, they sought to have impact in hypervisible ways. In addition to achieving career success as leaders in their organizations including a few attaining C-suite positions, many of them reached beyond their day-to-day responsibilities by taking on additional organizational roles such as championing diversity and inclusion efforts, joining boards of other (frequently nonprofit) organizations, and mentoring the next generation of diverse leaders.
Rather than hiding their unique status, they chose to be authentic leaders and share their experiences with others—particularly up-and-coming Black associates. Sarah, a senior vice president in financial services, said: “It is about creating the environment, the safety net, and the opportunity to institutionalize some things … so that the next generation of folks who pass through here, who are likely to be younger, more diverse, ambitious … if they work hard, and we create the kind of environment for them to be their best self, the company will do extraordinarily well, and by extension so will they.”
a. Valerie Purdie-Vaughns and Richard P. Eibach, “Intersectional Invisibility: The Distinctive Advantages and Disadvantages of Multiple Subordinate-Group Identities,” Sex Roles 59 (2008): 377–391.
b. Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam, “The Glass Cliff: Evidence that Women are Over-Represented in Precarious Leadership Positions,” British Journal of Management 16 (2005): 81–90.
Adapted from “Interviews with 59 Black Female Executives Explore Intersectional Invisibility and Strategies to Overcome It,” on hbr.org, May 10, 2018 (product #H04BBI).
They also understood the reasons behind their ambitions and used these reasons to drive them. Some women wanted to advance to senior leadership roles so they could influence business strategy, lead change, and advance the goals and values of the company. Others wanted power in order to bring out the best in their teams and foster an inclusive culture.
They confidently seized opportunities
Transitioning from first-line leader to midlevel leader required women to believe in their ability to perform across a variety of situations, identify and seize opportunities, and promote their capabilities and interests. Acknowledging their desire for advancement and seeing themselves as leaders allowed them to step outside their comfort zones to raise their hands for assignments, acquire skills, and take roles beyond their area of expertise. This allowed them to explore unfamiliar functions and business units to gain experiences that were new, difficult, and uncomfortable.
Bianca (all names have been changed), an assistant vice president (AVP), described seeking opportunities in areas outside of her expertise:
There’s one thing I’ve learned about how to take steps to get to where I want to be: I must take chances and risks by learning about areas that I don’t know about.
Lisa, another AVP, let it be known to the leaders in her organization that she was interested in working in Latin America. As a result, she was offered a leadership role:
I’ve always been interested in working internationally, and so I put it out there. I’m now an AVP in Latin America, learning Spanish, and have responsibilities for a team of 12 to 14 people and an entire line of business. There are opportunities that I now have in this role that I may not even have had the opportunity to experience if I had stayed in the United States.
Other women described working in areas outside their current expertise, allowing them to learn product areas or skills as part of their leadership growth.
They pursued management challenges
The developmental experiences that best prepared the women I studied (and this is likely true of other aspiring leaders as well) were challenging management experiences that offered broader leadership responsibility and greater business scope. In order to advance from first-level management toward senior leadership, the women in my sample needed to have access to managing people, critical negotiations, new businesses ventures, and external client relations. These situations involved complex assignments focusing on strategy, product development, business operations, and financial management. The women started small, but started somewhere, and then increased the complexity over time.
These experiences were especially important in workplaces undergoing rapid organizational change, and served as important tools for women of color to elevate their skills.
Astrid, a sales vice president (VP), described a staffing experience from very early on in her career that taught her the importance of understanding a team’s culture before making changes that affected her employees:
I was the manager of a call center, and I inherited all of my team. I had a very diverse team with a very different and strong culture. I came in as a go-getter and directive leader, thinking I was going to implement some meaningful change. I was extremely ambitious and extremely independent. This was a very family-oriented community that viewed their work as a means to pay for their life with their family. It was a huge lesson for me in that, as a leader, [I had to] learn the culture.
Adriane, another VP, reflected on having to make an unpopular decision. In her organization, there was debate about whether their associates should change managers. After hearing feedback from all across the world, she chose to have employees change managers, even though it was unpopular among some. She reports it “was a hard decision to make, but it felt like it was the best decision for the organization.”
A third VP shared about taking on a new and unfamiliar experience of leading an entire financial team, bringing in new leaders, and outlining a plan to grow the organization.
They cultivated influential mentors
Having influential senior leaders—including men as well as women of color—serve as mentors, advisers, and role models provided emerging women managers with the tacit knowledge needed to navigate their company’s leadership structure. Mentors also advised on some of the less-talked-about necessities for staying on a desired career path: boosting resilience, coping with difficult emotions, and managing hypervisibility (the experience of feeling constantly observed because of one’s difference, or of feeling “on display” as one of the few women of color in the company).
For the most part, the women I studied had to take the initiative to build strong relationship capital across identities and throughout the organization. Women who were savvy in this area described receiving career advice, psychosocial support, and growth opportunities through the developmental relationships they fostered with senior leaders, former managers, and influential mentors in their network.
That said, some reported being approached by leaders in their organization. Laura, a VP, noted that a leadership team member sat down with her to talk for more than a half hour during her first six months on the job. “Since then,” she reports, “I’ve consistently had interactions with our leadership team members and eventually ended up working for the same senior leader, who is now a direct report of the CEO, who came into my office years earlier.”
Blythe, an AVP, shared that her managers are women and are big on empowering their associates. “Having the opportunity to present to senior leaders would not have happened if they didn’t actually allow me to have a seat at the table for the discussions,” she notes.
The Organization’s Role
Elevating women of color isn’t just the job of the women themselves, as these experiences highlight. Yes, women as well as men must be intrinsically motivated to aspire to leadership roles and seize opportunities. But companies also have a key part to play in fostering diversity in their leadership pipeline. Here are some steps they can take:
Educate managers about the work realities faced by women of color
Women of color face barriers that many other employees don’t. Their credibility is often questioned; they’re stereotyped and seen as token employees; they aren’t afforded access to critical leadership experiences; and they are often excluded from influential networks. (See the sidebar “Navigating Intersectional Invisibility.”) Managers need to understand how and why these women face these challenges, including the emotional tax they face for being different, and come up with solutions to combat them.6 To begin, leaders can make inclusion visible and part of the company’s core values. Secondly, they can embed inclusive behaviors and practices into employee and manager development. (See the sidebar “How Pinterest Empowers Inclusive Leadership” for an example of how one company does this.)
This said, training alone will change nothing if managers aren’t held accountable for culture and talent. Business leaders monitor and are held accountable for making or missing sales goals, so why not the same for diversity and inclusion? That’s why companies must monitor culture and talent metrics for women of color (hires, promotions, turnover) in addition to surveying them about how they’re experiencing their development and progression (or lack thereof). Companies should also openly acknowledge and celebrate inclusive managers in public workplace communications. In addition, to support managers, they can create forums where managers can be vulnerable, talk about mistakes, and ask questions.
How Pinterest Empowers Inclusive Leadership
A CONVERSATION WITH CANDICE MORGAN
Candice Morgan is the former head of inclusion and diversity at Pinterest, where she worked to improve the company’s diversity rates and create a more inclusive culture. In this brief conversation, Women at Work cohost Nicole Torres talks to Candice about how she encouraged inclusivity at the managerial level.
NICOLE TORRES: One of the things you’re focusing on is training managers to be more inclusive. What are you doing specifically?
CANDICE MORGAN: We did an internal study where we looked at our managers and tried to understand the differences between the ones who scored exceptionally high on inclusion, as rated by their employees, and the ones who got average scores.
There were a number of things that those exceptionally inclusive managers were doing. They valued employees’ ideas even when those ideas differed from their own, and they were more willing to admit their mistakes, which creates safety for taking risks and being able to grow, learn, make a prediction or mistake, and come back from it. Those managers also spent more time soliciting feedback from people around what they want to work on, and found ways to make those passions a part of employees’ roles. They invested more in structured socializing and ensured the socializing was inclusive for everyone—not after work with a beer, but much more broad and intentional.
These exceptionally inclusive managers did these things naturally. They also had a humility to them, which brings up the idea of being authentic. If you can admit your mistakes, you signal a type of trust and authenticity to your employees. We created a playbook based on those inclusive behaviors, and we now have all new managers go through this inclusive manager training and use that playbook as a resource.
NICOLE: It sounds like by training managers to be more aware of themselves and to be more authentic themselves, that helps employees also feel like they can be their real selves at work.
CANDICE: Yes. Sometimes leaders will ask, “What’s the most important thing that I can do?” It’s modeling that authenticity. It’s being able to talk about the times you made a wrong call and what you learned from it. That encourages other employees to do the same.
Adapted from “Lead with Authenticity,” Women at Work podcast season 1, episode 3, February 9, 2018.
Integrate conversations on workplace biases into sponsorship programs
Sponsorship has been identified as an important yet underused tool for affirming aspiration, unlocking potential, and driving engagement in employees of color.7 When sponsorship works, it can provide the support and advocacy needed for advancement. However, to develop trustworthy connections, sponsors and protégés must be able to openly discuss negative stereotypes, microaggressions, and challenges or barriers that women of color face in the workplace. This, of course, can be difficult or uncomfortable. So before pairing sponsors with protégés, it’s vital that both sponsors and high potentials are prepared to be advocates and allies.
Sponsors should be formally trained on topics such as minimizing unconscious bias, developing inclusive behaviors, valuing differences, and understanding power and privilege in corporations. And protégés should be trained on how to be sponsor-ready by giving them background information on the unwritten rules of senior leadership, strategic stakeholder management, and authentic leadership presence.
Ensure women of color’s access to essential business experiences
Exclusionary cultural practices are often deeply embedded in company culture, organizational structures, and talent practices. For example, one study revealed that there are gender and racial disparities to work assignments.8 These types of disparities often shut women of color out of the critical business experiences they need to advance in leadership. In traditional male-dominated hierarchies, tacit knowledge about how the organization works, what advancement opportunities are available, and how to access mentors and sponsors is often shared through homogenous closed social networks that women of color aren’t privy to. How can women raise their hands for opportunities if they don’t even know these opportunities exist in the first place?
To improve upon this, companies need to make women of color’s access to highly visible and critical business assignments a strategic priority. One approach is to invite them to shadow executives, which can help demystify leadership and provide an understanding of the business challenges leaders face. Women should then be given access to sponsors (if they haven’t already) to ensure this shadowing isn’t a one-time event, but is part of a long-term commitment to their learning and advancement.
Women of color aspire to hold top leadership roles that allow them to lead with influence and purpose. Too often, their ambitions are thwarted. But learning from women of color who have advanced can help other women and the companies they work for turn aspirations into something more concrete: meaningful and long-lasting leadership experiences.
Adapted from content posted on hbr.org, August 31, 2018 (product #H04IKM).