Tag Archive for: Leadership diversity

Why Creating Inclusion at Senior Levels Requires Formal Sponsorship

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formal sponsorshipInformal sponsorship and mentorship can proliferate inequitable power dynamics in organizations. Organic sponsorship is a big part of how leadership proactively recasts the pipeline in the majority image. Meanwhile, the status quo power dynamic inhibits individuals who are in the minority among leadership from lifting others up behind them.

(This contribution from Pulsely dives into how informal sponsorship works to reinforce the glass ceiling).

Here’s one core way in which your organization is perpetuating inequitable power dynamics at senior levels: informal sponsorship and mentorship.

When you connect the dots of power, organic sponsorship is a big part of how leadership proactively, repetitively, and, by default, recasts the pipeline in the majority image. Meanwhile, the status quo power dynamic inhibits individuals who are in the minority among leadership from lifting others up behind them.

We offer a six point case for why leadership inclusion requires formal sponsorship programs that are deliberately disruptive in creating more equitable opportunities.

Mentorship and Sponsorship – What It Really Means

When it comes to career advancement, mentorship is both necessary and not enough. The common distinction is: a mentor talks with you, a sponsor talks about you.

A mentorship is 1-1. Mentors help you within your journey. They help you to navigate the intersection of your goals and career choices, identify and amplify strengths, and develop in core areas. Mentorship often acts as a trustworthy mirror for personal growth.

A sponsorship is more than 1-1. A sponsor relationship is 1-1+ an audience of power. Sponsors put skin and reputation in the game by leveraging their social capital (influence) in rooms you’ve yet to enter, and advocate for opportunities and advancement for you among their peers. The protégé also has the motivation of stepping up to the challenge because the sponsor’s reputation is on the line, too. Sponsorship often acts as a spotlight that shines on you to lift you up to the next level of career advancement.

As written by Rosalind Chow in Harvard Business Review, “Sponsorship can be understood as a form of intermediated impression management, where sponsors act as brand managers and publicists for their protégés. This work involves the management of others’ views on the sponsored employee. Thus, the relationship at the heart of sponsorship is not between protégés and sponsors, as is often thought, but between sponsors and an audience — the people they mean to sway to the side of their protégés.”

Why Informal Mentorship and Sponsorship Are Inequitable

“Regardless of education, motivation, and personal and professional success factors, being sponsored by a white man remains the primary accelerant to the career mobility of Black women.” (Stephanie Bradley Smith in HBR)

As this quote underlines, and Catalyst iterates in Sponsoring Women to Success, “Sponsorship is focused on advancement and predicated on power.”

The dynamic of organic sponsorship is ultimately majority promoting majority, with the same repeated outcome at leadership, save minor and temporary shifts. Even the common phrase of “winning sponsorship” has a blinding and dubious premise.

While data from different surveys inevitably differs on absolutes (for example, the % of people who report they have a sponsor is highly contextual to the criteria), what remains steady across studies is a debilitating power gap between individuals of the majority and non-majority when it comes to both sponsorship and who they are sponsored by.

Here’s what reproduces the current senior management and leadership profile:

1. Mentorship and especially executive sponsorship have a catalytic impact on career advancement for both protégés and sponsors.

  • Male managers with sponsorship are 23% more likely (female managers with sponsorship are 19% more likely) to progress to the next rung of the career ladder than peers who do not have sponsors.
  • Managers and executives who sponsor high-achieving junior talent are 53% more likely to advance to the next leadership level relative to peers who don’t sponsor.

2. Access to mentorship and executive sponsorship is highly variable depending on who you are, regardless of performance = inequitable.

3. Mentorship and sponsorship are especially necessary to advance women and people of color.

  • Black managers are 65% more likely to progress to the next rung in the ladder if they have a sponsor.
  • Mentorship programs increase representation of Black, Hispanic, and Asian-American women, and Hispanic and Asian-American men, by 9% to 24%.
  • Having mentors and sponsors who advocated for them is the single attribute shared by people of color who have progressed furthest in the leadership ranks.
  • Executive sponsorship has been proven to be the most effective organizational intervention to advance Black talent.
  • Latina women with sponsorship earn 6.1% more than peers who lack sponsors and black women earn 5.1% more.

4. But people tend to mentor and sponsor those just like them – and this means the majority (with the power) mostly sponsors the majority.

  • 61% of people indicate their mentorship developed naturally.
  • As much as 91% of white managers have no Black, Asian, or Latinx people in their immediate social network.
  • 71% of sponsors report their protégé is the same race or gender as their own.
  • 58% of women and 54% of men who sponsor choose a protégé because they “make me feel comfortable.”
  • A study of 72 protégés found that 100% of sponsors of white male protégés were men and the majority (73.5%) were white. Among Black female protégés, most sponsors were Black (57%) and 27% were women.
  • Payscale found 77.1 percent of male protégés said they had a male sponsor while women were about half as likely to have a male sponsor.
  • Payscale found 90% of white men and women protégés reported they had a white sponsor, while Blacks and Hispanics were 35% less likely to.

5. Not only are there far fewer female and minority senior leaders, but increased personal career risk can hinder their sponsoring.

  • Women hold only 1/4 of executive roles in the 1000 largest companies and BIPOCs make up only 17% of the C-suite.
  • Despite a desire and even a higher sense of obligation to lift others of similar sex/gender up (26% for Black leaders vs. 20% for Hispanic and Asian and 7% for Caucasian), Black senior leaders face higher scrutiny and are 26% less likely to commit to being a sponsor than white executives.
  • More than one third of black leaders report they never sponsor a junior talent who looks like them – despite often wanting to, at tension with personal career risk.

6. To further the gap, white and male sponsors hold more influence on outcomes of their protégé’s employment than those from the non-majority groups.

  • In U.S. law firms and among lawyers who had sponsorship, white men were half as likely (30%) as women of color (62%) to feel that the lack of an influential mentor was a barrier to their advancement.
  • Payscale found: black women with black sponsors are paid 11.3% less than black women with white sponsors; Hispanic women with Hispanic sponsors make 15.5% less than those with white sponsors; women with women sponsors make 14.6% less than those with male sponsors, and even men with female sponsors make 8.7% less than those with male sponsors. Payscale notes the gaps shrink after compensable factors are weighed in, but the gap remains.

If you want to introduce more equity into talent development, you cannot look away from the affinity bias-based pattern of those with high social capital using that power and influence to promote those who look like them into power, too, while also further advancing their own status. Nor can you look away from how the non-majority individuals who break through to leadership are inhibited from doing the same.

Formal mentorship and sponsorship programs are about deliberately disrupting the cycle of inequitable talent development that has strongly influenced your management and leadership to date. In the next article, we explore how in more detail.

‍Guest contribution: Originally published on the Pulsely blog, written by Aimee Hansen. Pulsely delivers diversity and inclusion diagnostics and actionable DEI insights to drive inclusion, equity, and performance. Pulsely’s scientific framework combines the power of understanding four key drivers of inclusion: diversity data, workplace inclusion, inclusion competencies, and performance indicators. To learn more, visit Pulsely, read an interview with Co-Founder Betsy Bagley, or check out the Pulsely blog to find more content like this. 

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Catalyst Honors Gap for Pay Equity, Leadership Diversity

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diverse workforceBy Melissa Anderson

Gap, Inc. was honored last week with a Catalyst award for its achievements in building diversity and inclusion at the company. Not only has the company made strides in increasing the number of women in key leadership positions, it has also focused on improving opportunities for women of color.

Between 2007 and 2015, the company has increased the representation of women reporting directly to the CEO from 33% to 77%. Forty percent of those top level reports are women of color. Similarly, in the same time frame, the number of women serving on Gap’s board has increased from one to four, two of whom are women of color.

Women also lead four of the company’s five brands, and since 2007, the representation of women at the vice president level has increased from 44% to 49.7%.

“Equality is engrained in everything we do. For us, it was not only the right thing to do, but also a business imperative,” said Dan Briskin, VP of Global Employee Relations and HR Shared Services, Gap Inc., during a panel at Catalyst’s annual conference on Wednesday.

The company’s award-winning diversity initiative, “Women and Opportunity,” was made up of three key pillars, according to Heather Robsahm, Senior Director of Talent Management for Banana Republic, one of Gap’s brands. These include career mobility, results oriented work environments (ROWE), and pay equity.

The vast majority (83%) of Gap’s current female executives are promoted from within, and many, like Robsahm, come from the company’s field operation. As part of its career mobility pillar, Gap has created career readiness programs to ensure employees are able to build their skills and set their career trajectory.

“We have a deep bench for women who are poised the lead the company into the future,” Robsham says.

Instituting the ROWE has helped the company improve accountability and engagement, Robsahm says, and demonstrated that people can own their time and still be successful at their jobs.

Finally, in 2014, the company affirmed it had achieved gender pay equity across its global workforce of 150,000 people. When the company set out to track its workforce pay, executives expected they might come across some gaps, so the company set aside some money to make up the difference in pay for women. But after looking at the data and partnering with an external firm to verify the results, the company found it had no significant gaps and hadn’t needed to tap into the extra cash.

“When you are focused on paying people for the work they do, and you are focused on grappling to get the best talent and focused on paying the market rate for that talent, [pay equity] naturally follows,” Briskin said.

This was the first year Catalyst named only one award winner, which, conference organizers said, emphasizes the impressiveness of Gap’s achievements.

Leadership and Courage

Also speaking at the event was Marillyn Hewson, CEO and Chair of Lockheed Martin, the defense and technology firm that took in over $46 billion in revenue last year.

In a Q&A with Catalyst CEO and President Deborah Gillis, Hewson described her views on diversity. Several years ago, she noted, Lockheed’s senior management realized it needed to get more women and minorities into its leadership pipeline.

“It starts with leadership setting the tone from the top,” Hewson said. She emphasized the importance of taking meaningful action to build diversity.

Today 20% of Lockheed’s leadership and a third of its board are women. But earlier in her career, things were different, Hewson recalled. That’s why today she places such importance on mentoring other women, she said.

She recalled often being the only woman in the room coming up in her career and noted how difficult it can be to deal with negative comments or unintentional slights when there’s no one to share them with.

At one point she was greeted in an all-male meeting with a comment that the others were glad she’d arrived because they ‘needed a pretty face’ in the room. “I said, ‘I guess I’m in the wrong room because I have other things to do,’” she remembered.

“You can be caught off guard, and having the chance to talk to other women about those things makes a difference.”

Hewson chairs the diversity and inclusion council at Lockheed Martin, and requires business leaders to meet with her once per quarter to discuss their strategies and metrics on diversity. She expects them to share information on hiring, promotion and attrition with respect to the demographics of their division. The company has also recently made an effort to incorporate white men into the conversation on diversity, she revealed. Previously, this group had felt locked out of diversity efforts, she said, which was presumably doing more harm than good.

An audience member asked Hewson to discuss a quote by Gloria Steinem: “Women still require an adjective and males don’t.”

When will a woman CEO simply be referred to as a CEO, she inquired.

“This is my fourth year as a CEO, and I don’t get the woman question as much anymore,” Hewson said. “That’s why I want to talk about being a leader.”

She encouraged women who aspire to be leaders to be courageous and take difficult assignments that showcase their capabilities and experience.

“Importantly, you bring the character and integrity that the team needs,” she said.

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Black History Month Coverage: Diversifying Diversity for Better Results

diverse women in the boardroomLeadership diversity pays off, and a new study by McKinsey “Why Diversity Matters” has the hard numbers to prove it. It also points out that most corporate diversity programs don’t go far enough to be inclusive of ethnically diverse leaders.

The Glass Hammer has long upheld the “business case for diversity,” and senior women in the corporate space will be pleased to see statistically significant results supporting this argument. More women at the top will indeed help a company perform better. But the study is also a reminder that the definition of diversity extends beyond the group of white women who make up the bulk of those taking part in leadership diversity programs. According to McKinsey, including more ethnically diverse individuals in the leadership tier of companies will produce even better financial performance.

“Diversity matters because we increasingly live in a diverse world that has become deeply interconnected. It should come as no surprise that more diverse companies and institutions are achieving better performance,” write the report authors, McKinsey’s Vivian Hunt, Dennis Layton, and Sara Prince.

According to the study, the top quartile of companies for racial/ethnic diversity in leadership were 30% more likely to outperform the industry median.

Companies in the bottom quartile for gender and for ethnic/racial diversity underperformed compared to their peers. McKinsey urges companies to be more intentional on increasing diversity. While acknowledging that there is more to do before companies approach gender parity at the leadership level, the report shows that efforts toward raising the percentage of women in executive leadership have made a difference.

“The data appears to show that less attention has been given to the attainment of racial and ethnic diversity,” McKinsey says. “By this measure it becomes apparent that for US companies, a dedicated effort would be needed to achieve leadership diversity that begins to reflect the demographic composition of the labor force and the national population.”

Comparatively, companies still need to do much more to improve ethnic diversity in leadership. And according to these numbers, the difficult work of addressing implicit racial biases in the workplace is worth the effort.

“Organizations are often uncomfortable with the discussion of race here in the U.S. and abroad,” says Katherine Phillips, Paul Calello Professor of Leadership and Ethics Management at Columbia University. “Targeting women is easier for organizations because it doesn’t feel as controversial somehow.”

But, Phillips says, there is much that companies can do to broaden their efforts toward improving diversity in leadership and throughout the organization.

“Organizations can better incorporate racial or ethnic diversity targets by first acknowledging that their organizations may not currently be designed for racial minorities to thrive. That was the first step with women – there was an acknowledgment that women had not been so welcomed before and that their needs were not being met. The same acknowledgment needs to happen with racial/ethnic differences to help change things.”

According to Phillips, senior women can help push for more meaningful change at their companies. She encourages the leadership to mindfully sponsor of people of color which will “diversify their own networks and build a broad coalition across these various groups,” she says.

Women who’ve focused on gender diversity have the tool kit to push their companies toward addressing the need for more ethnically diverse leaders as well, Phillips says.

“The barriers and issues may be different but the process of moving the needle is the same – sponsorship and mentorship, vocal advocacy, acknowledgment of biases both explicit and unconscious, and a commitment to changing the status quo are all critical.”

According to the research, businesses with the most women in leadership were 15% more likely to produce above average financial returns. Studies have long shown that diversity makes business sense – teams with greater diversity produce smarter, more collaborative decisions. Research has also shown that companies with more women in the boardroom outperform the market.

But this new research, which crunched companies’ average earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) between 2010 and 2013, dug deeper. It tracked the gender, ethnic and racial demographics of senior management and boards of 366 large, public companies in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Brazil, Mexico and Chile, and while greater gender diversity produced better returns, greater ethnic diversity produced an even bigger result.

As we move toward a more diverse and global economy, companies that fall to the back of the pack on diversity will also find themselves lagging their peers in terms of corporate performance as well, this study indicates.

Diversity is the competitive edge that most companies are not taking advantage of. By empowering women and ethnically diverse leaders to push into the upper echelons of corporate management, companies will enjoy outsized performance. Unlocking the potential of leadership diversity will take constant and careful work, like any business transformation. But in the end, that work will pay off.

By Melissa J. Anderson

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