Why women and people of colour fall off the glass cliff

[Music]

so i spend most of my time

talking and thinking and writing about

women’s experiences in uk and u.s

workplaces

particularly black women’s experiences

and so for me understanding the glass

cliff the situation

that underrepresented leaders find

themselves in when they take on

leadership positions

only to find that their chances of

success have been limited before they

even begin

really was an eye-opener

now i’m aware that for a lot of people

this might be the first time you’re

hearing about the glass cliff

and so i think the easiest way into the

conversation is by starting with the

glass ceiling

that invisible but seemingly impossible

to break through barrier

that sits above the heads of women in

business and stops them from reaching

the absolute pinnacles of their

professional capabilities

we talk a lot about the glass ceiling

being there and what it’s like to live

and to work underneath it

but we don’t really talk about what

happens to those people who do

manage to break through i feel like we

maybe have this

shared imagination that if someone were

able to break through the glass ceiling

it would be onwards and upwards from

there you know the sky’s the limit

but in reality that’s not what often

happens

because all too often when somebody does

break through the glass ceiling

they find themselves in a new dangerous

position

they find themselves teetering on the

edge of the glass cliff

so i’m going to talk about

underrepresented people a lot in this

and that can mean so many different

things to different people in different

moments and different contexts

but i’m talking about those people who

are most underrepresented

at the most senior levels of business so

that is women

and that’s racially marginalized people

essentially anybody who’s not both white

and male and so the story often goes

that when underrepresented people take

over a business

that business seems to start to fail

and that’s really strange and if that’s

true that’s worth looking into

and so the times newspaper did look into

it

and they released an article with a

headline women on the board

a help or hindrance and they said what

i’ve just told you

that when women take over businesses at

those most senior levels

board member ceo that those businesses

seem to find themselves in a moment of

trouble

and so they concluded that women on the

board were in fact

bad for business and they were right

but just in one small way

in a hundred other much bigger much more

important ways they were absolutely

wrong

but we can start with where they were

right they were right that the research

does show

that when underrepresented people do

take on those most senior roles

that businesses do seem to be in a

moment of trouble

but it’s not like they want you to think

it’s not that we’ve you know

stomped our way into boardrooms only to

look around and think

oh god i don’t know what i’m doing here

it’s not that at all but the reason you

might think that

is that they haven’t told you the

beginning of the story

and the beginning of the story is what

we need to understand

if we want to see what’s stopping more

people who aren’t both white and male

from being successful when they take on

leadership

roles

so there’s a piece of research from the

university of exeter

and they looked at ftse 100 companies

and when they appointed

female leaders those businesses were

much more likely than average

to have already been in a consistent

period

of five months of poor performance

and that poor performance can look like

all kinds of things

it could be a reputational scandal where

the tarnish is likely to be passed on to

the new leader

it could be a hit to market valuations

or to profit but whatever that was

these businesses were all much more

likely than average

to have already been in a consistent

period of poor performance before that

new leader

was appointed and this isn’t a single

piece of research

and it’s not even limited to a single

country

researchers at the university of utah

did a really similar thing

but they didn’t just look at the

appointment of women they looked at the

appointment of women

and racially marginalized men and they

looked at fortune 500 companies over a

15-year period

so a huge data set and they found

exactly the same those businesses that

appointed

underrepresented leaders were much more

likely than average

to already be in a period of poor

performance

so maybe you’re listening to this and

you’re thinking well so what

so long as these people are getting an

opportunity why does it matter if the

businesses aren’t in perfect condition

before these people arrive

well one of the reasons it matters is

the narrative that that pushes back to

us

if an underrepresented person takes on a

role and their chances of being

successful

are limited before they even begin if

they do fail

if they do fall off that cliff the

message that we get back is

well of course they did someone like

that

that’s the not the right kind of person

to run a successful

business and so that message compounds

and we just internalize it

so i think all of this logically leads

us to two

questions the first of which is

why is this happening why

are businesses that are in trouble more

likely to appoint an underrepresented

leader

well it could be that in patriarchal

societies women are viewed as caregivers

as nurturers

and so research has shown that when a

business is in trouble

women are often appointed to lead not

for their ability to make

transformational change but because of

their perceived

soft skills for their ability to

re-engage that

workforce and to get them back motivated

again

but importantly because she’s not hired

for her ability to make transformational

change

research shows that she’s often not

given the tools or the time

necessary to make that change and so her

chances of falling off that cliff

are increased before she even begins

because of the limitations of the

imaginations

of the people who have brought her in

the second reason to paraphrase kristen

anderson who’s a psychology professor at

the university of houston

is that in business women might be seen

as more disposable

more expendable and that means they make

really good scapegoats

in that case if your business isn’t

doing well

bringing in a female leader could be a

real win-win scenario

if she comes in and is able to make that

transformational change then great your

business is transformed

but if she’s not all of the blame is

able to be put onto her shoulders

and she’s able to get pushed out of the

business pushed over that cliff

importantly the research then shows that

she’s more likely than not to be

replaced by a white

man a move known as the savior effect

and that savior effect signals to us to

shareholders investors employees

that the business is back in a safe pair

of hands

it’s back to business as usual and

really importantly that new

white male safe pair of hands is more

likely to be given

both the tools and the time necessary to

succeed

where the underrepresented person has

failed

so up until now we’ve been talking

about what happens when you are a

racially marginalized person

or a woman but as i said the majority of

my work

looks at black women so what happens

when we do take that more intersectional

look

when we think about the experiences of

people with not just one but

two marginalized identities

as you might imagine it’s not the best

story

if a new black woman takes over the most

senior role in the business

board member ceo we can safely assume

two things the first thing that we can

assume

as we’ve discussed is the business might

not be in great shape

and the second thing that we can assume

is that she’s likely to be managing a

large team of white men

that leadership layered just below her

her closest cohort

and we can assume that because in 2019

the lenient foundation

reported that white men make up about 30

of that

entry-level junior cohort but by time we

get to the c-suite

that’s actually ballooned up to 68

that means white men are the only group

whose representation

grows as they become more senior

or to put it a different way they’re the

only group

who experience the opposite of the glass

ceiling

instead of looking up and not being able

to see themselves reflected back at all

they look up and see nothing but

themselves at the most

senior levels there is of course until

they don’t

until they have a new boss who’s

somebody like a black woman

and the reason this matters is there’s

research from the university of texas

and the university of michigan

and they look to what happens to that

group of men

who are so used to seeing themselves

directly mirrored back

when they get a new boss who doesn’t

mirror both their whiteness and their

maleness

and what they found was amazing they

found that as soon as they get a boss

who doesn’t directly mirror them in both

of those ways

they report feeling less personally

connected to the business

less able to personally identify with it

and less personally invested in it

and that means that their work

performance suffered they did worse at

their jobs

now if a business is already in trouble

even the greatest leader is not going to

solve it single-handedly

she needs her team particularly her

senior team

and so if they’ve stopped doing their

jobs properly all they’re doing

is continuing to push her towards the

edge of that cliff

the second thing that same piece of

research found was that

they stopped doing a really important

part of any manager’s job

that’s managing their teams they stopped

developing

mentoring working with the people who

was their job to take care of but they

didn’t stop doing that equally

no they mostly stopped helping working

with developing

anyone in that team who was also

racially marginalized

and so in that way the glass cliff bites

twice

we’re not only pushing the existing

leader closer to the edge of their cliff

we’re stopping what could be this new

cohort of underrepresented leaders from

coming up

because we’re not giving them the same

support

guidance mentorship development that the

rest of their colleagues are getting

so i’m telling you this because i want

you to be a part

of making this change and that might

sound impossible you might be thinking

well

i can’t change businesses or charities

governments

any of the places where we see the glass

cliff playing out

but and stay with me for a second

you can because none of those things are

real

businesses government charities all of

these things they’re just groups of

people who’ve come together to do

something

and we’re a group of people who have

come together to do something

and so we can make that change

we can look at our own conscious and

unconscious biases

and we can decide that we see the value

in all people all of the time

not just some people when we have a

problem that they might be able to solve

or something that we might be able to

blame them for

so as angela davis says we have to act

as though it’s possible to change the

world

and you have to do it all of the time

and so that’s what i’m asking you to do

i’m asking you to look at yourself and

to decide that you are not going to be

part of pushing anybody else closer

towards the edge of their own cliff

and i want you to know that i’m going to

be right alongside you

trying to do the same

you