Author, "Winning the Talent Shift: Three Steps to Unleashing the New High Performance Workplace"; Managing Director, Private Advisor Group
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I recently received an SOS call from a high-performing executive facing one of the most personally and professionally damaging political situations in 15 years as a top performer at her organization. With all the drama of a lead in a Broadway play, her boss had pulled her into a surprise meeting to accuse her of something she never did. Citing behavior from her that he had fabricated, he dropped the bomb that he was transferring her key company project to his new hire because she was “costing him precious relationships within the company.”
In reality, her leadership on that key project had already been very successful, but the false illusion he presented was all that was needed to justify her removal from her high-profile position. Shocked, deflated and frustrated, this executive was being forced to accept that her supervisor’s aspirations and ambitions outweighed both her leadership achievements and the inevitable industry-leading results she would have earned for the company upon launch of the initiative.
This story is just one example of how today’s companies allow high performers (women, men and people of color) to be pushed off their upward trajectory, and our organizations are suffering because of it. The boss in this story is today’s typical celebrated leader — an over-aggressive individual who will outmaneuver, deceive and discredit perceived internal competitors as they pursue their own success.
Leadership roles, once the most coveted positions in our organizations and the No. 1 driver of company performance, have become little more than a trophy in today’s game of “may the most politically astute win,” and for companies striving to increase diversity and create high-performing teams, these figural, aggressive winners are kryptonite.
More candor is needed at the highest levels of our organizations to pull back the curtain on what is really happening within our companies and how these unrecognized barriers are imploding our best intentions to design diverse, high-performing teams in the workplace.
For companies to achieve ultimate success, they must address these three invisible barriers existing within most companies across the globe.
Invisible Barrier 1: Companies have the right idea but the wrong execution.
Strategic hiring of diverse individuals from the entry-level to the middle of organizations has resulted in little progress. With only 8% of senior executives proficient at both strategy and execution, this conscious approach is failing at both impact and execution. This hands-off, groundswell strategy (typically successful in marketing) invites ideas to multiply organically throughout an organization or marketplace, but it fails when used to promote diversity because its success relies on the masses to automatically embrace change. Most do not, thus creating barriers for the very people we are hiring to incite progress.
Solution: Upgrade your diversity and high-performance strategy by hiring diverse, true high performers at the top of your organization.
Invisible Barrier 2: Companies are hiring the right diverse individuals, but they are reporting to the wrong leaders.
This dichotomy has resulted in a mismatch of skills, creating insidious daily conflict and severely limiting the very people we are hiring to bring increased engagement and revenue, innovative ideas, development of our people and robust leadership.
The outcome? Today, high performers are being targeted, bullied and abused in today’s workplaces, in spite of their strong leadership, higher engagement and team investment. No one is immune, and women, people of color and even some men become casualties, gutting our organizations.
Who are the perpetrators of this abuse? Your low-performing leaders.
These individuals exude ineffective, false leadership traits like gravitas, competitiveness, political acumen, power, strategic working relationships and control. All of these traits are toxic to diverse individuals and high performers, inhibiting performance and diluting their value to the organization.
And who is managing this conflict? No one. In fact, 53.8% of charges filed with the EEOC in FY 2019 were for retaliation, making it the most frequently filed charge within the agency. Our unprepared HR teams lack the correct infrastructure and power to handle the inevitable division caused by ineffective leaders who are unqualified to lead high-performing talent.
Solution: Companies need to leverage new, high-performing leadership criteria to identify their true leaders while concurrently investing in a new HR infrastructure that protects and develops their talent.
Invisible Barrier 3: Corporate boards, C-suites and HR have the right goals but ineffective oversight fails to lead us through the transition to the diverse, high-performing workplace we say we want.
According to Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, more boards are viewing their people as their greatest competitive differentiation, with 96% of boards believing their organizations are making good progress with D&I initiatives. However, only 40% actually track progress. Even fewer are actually making progress.
To drive meaningful change, executives must not only set goals but also create new accountability within their organizations to implement, track and report real progress on those goals to the board. Without this accountability, organizations will continue reinforcing a false sense of success, mismanaging the people they say they value and consistently failing to meet their goals.
Solution: Meaningful change starts at the top. Achieving high-performing diversity will require true top-down leadership, oversight and reporting.
In order to make real progress, we need to 1) acknowledge that these three barriers are alive in virtually every organization across the globe, and 2) ask a few critical, high-impact questions:
• Why is my company allowing poor leaders who target, bully and abuse our employees to remain in coveted leadership positions?
• How can we create an inflection point and set our D&I initiatives on the right path to success?
• What would the effect be on my brand and bottom line if my shareholders, customers or potential new hires knew this was happening in my organization?
• Most importantly, what am I going to do about it?
It’s time to remove these barriers. Boards, C-suites and HR, our people and our shareholders deserve better.
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