Winning the Talent Shift. Berta Aldrich
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more highly educated workers, emerging consumers, and innovations that have created unrestricted business opportunities. At the same time, more women and highly educated talent are entering the workplace than ever before, introducing new ways of thinking, leading, inspiring, and engaging to meet these new demands. The unmanaged sea change has created devastating effects on the workplace, placing women and this new high-performing talent squarely in the center of the war. These key groups are vulnerable, unprotected, and at risk because today's boards and executives are using a bottom-up, groundswell marketing strategy to manage the change, failing to lead their companies through one of the greatest transformations in business history. This has left companies at substantial risk for future lawsuits, failed brands, and underperforming teams, potentially costing shareholders billions of dollars each year. The overwhelming research and anecdotal evidence today suggest that the majority of companies are failing to tap into the exceptional talent already present within their walls. This is especially true for women, but also affects men. Pointing fingers at men has only exacerbated the separation of genders into silos of talent.
The answer is not pitting men and women against each other or continuing to encourage cultures where only the strong survive. For companies to adapt to the current market opportunities and to create a high-performing workplace that leverages the variety of talents already available, the company of the future must be equipped with the tools to integrate, inspire, and empower their teams.
Today's workplace and current leaders have not been adequately prepared for the influx of different talents, genders, and beliefs. Training on diversity and encouraging women to “Lean In” is only exacerbating the worst of situations and has resulted in overly competitive, “win at any cost” HR systems that tend to inaccurately identify and promote leaders unprepared to maximize the talent of these new, diverse teams.
Companies can shift away from their destructive practices, and instead maximize their teams, gain a competitive advantage in their industries, and achieve cultures in which inspired and engaged teams and leaders produce great results. Helping leaders identify why they're failing to foster high-performing teams and giving them simple steps that virtually assure high performance across their companies is my personal mission and the focus of this book.
First, a personal story to highlight the high stakes and to share a path toward a solution.
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My team and I were still elated after winning an industry award the prior month (our fourth) for our leadership in rebranding and remarketing our firm. By all measures, we were a high-performing team, delivering great work, supporting each other, supporting our fellow colleagues, and delivering highly acclaimed, world-renowned results. As a leader, it didn't get any better than this. The team was engaged and empowered and so was I. By all external measures, I was a high-performing leader, leading a high-performing team.
A few weeks later, my job was eliminated. No explanation. No warning.
My mind was reeling. I had never been out of a job before. I had worked countless hours each week, at a job I loved, with a team I loved, producing great results for the organization. Why now? I had so many questions.
After a year filled with a lot of prayer and soul searching, it all became clear, but I'll share that lesson with you later.
Over the course of my one-year noncompete, I continued to mentor men and women in the workplace – most of whom were high performers. Mentoring others from outside the workplace for the first time in my career gave me new insight and a fresh perspective. I found myself responding to their challenges by sharing similar experiences of navigating the pitfalls of corporate life and noticed that women and men have the same challenges. Each conflict we discussed involved a high performer and an overly aggressive manager, typically a higher-level executive or a peer on a quest for more power.
When I was immersed in the workplace, I would have encouraged my mentees to “Lean In” to their challenges and then provide solutions based on the wisdom found on those pages and in other books that advise top performers to simply play within the sandbox they are given. With the clarity of an outside perspective, my mentoring shifted to questioning why those who are targeted and undermined stay at companies that mistreat them. I wanted to empower my mentees to create change and to stand up for themselves, but they couldn't. These bullies were powerful and sat in some of the highest positions in their organizations. Perhaps it took so much time to notice this bullying behavior at the highest levels of the corporate world because, regardless of your level in the workplace, it's the norm – an accepted cultural behavior regarded as part of the “game.” From the outside, it simply mirrors a fifth grader bullying a first grader on an elementary school playground.
Helping my mentees “Lean In” to conflict with a superior most likely meant “Leaning In” to a 3:00 p.m. meeting with HR on a Friday. They lacked the influence to change the rules. I noticed that high performers, particularly high-potential leaders and women in general, appeared to be targeted 100% of the time. Women tended to have less insight into why their superiors were targeting them, which required more conversation around why they were marginalized, overlooked, bullied, or abused. Each woman had a hard time processing the reality that, in most cases, it wasn't their fault. The men, to their credit, had a much more innate sense of how to move forward, mostly by hitting the issue head-on. Unfortunately, that approach backfired for women.
After experiencing several of the same conversations, a recurring problem emerged. Despite a desire to hire highly qualified men and women, most organizations are not designed to promote, support, or identify high performers – especially among women. Dropping talented women into corporate environments, traditionally dominated by men, without a plan for high-performance, mixed-gender teams, has resulted in defensiveness and conflict, often derailing the most competent women and mitigating their value. Men have been held back and derailed by this conflict in the workplace as well, but, fortunately, are more likely to have the capacity to endure it. Women are often blindsided by such conflicts and end up blaming themselves. This unmanaged conflict has allowed the wrong leaders to find opportunity in the chaos, mastering the art of politics and maneuvering their way into once-coveted leadership positions. These “old world” leaders are now in higher positions, seeking to defend their turf and overpower any perceived competitors, failing to effectively lead the transformation as a result.
During one pivotal mentoring session, an up-and-coming female leader shared how she had been derailed by a senior manager one level above her. She felt that it was common knowledge within the organization that the senior manager had risen to the executive ranks because she knew how to navigate and eliminate her competition. This executive bullied and discredited anyone in her path. I had unfortunately crossed paths with this executive as well, and ultimately survived, but not without earning a few battle scars to prove it. I survived out of sheer grit and tenacity, never willing to give up.
I had just finished this mentoring conversation when our daughter, Lauren, came home from high school and shared how she had heard of a girl being bullied. The girl targeted by the bullies was a good person who had done nothing to provoke the incident, and my daughter had reached out to her in support. Lauren was captain of the cheer team, a role that could be used for good in these types of situations, and she didn't disappoint. It wasn't the first time she would help someone being bullied, and I suspect it won't be the last. I was so proud of this young woman and the leader she had become, and then my mind drifted to imagining her in the workplace. How was she, and all of her smart, talented friends, going to survive? The workplace is full of bullies. How would she effectively stand up to a bully in the workplace who could eliminate her position or undermine her career? She was showing signs of being a great leader, but would she encounter the same dysfunction I did? The high performers I continue to mentor, and the over 1,000 men and women I've mentored or instructed over the years, all experienced similar barriers that kept them from performing at their best.
The workplace is not ready for my daughter, her generation, or even this current generation of top performers. Something needed to change. As one of my mentors once told me, the answer lies in the root cause. So I set out on a journey to help my daughter, her friends, the