The only time I got in trouble at school was when Mrs. Meldrum, my fourth-grade teacher and deeply attached to military anthems, singled me out, correctly, as the one pretending to be an opera singer during “Anchors Aweigh.” I had to stand in the hallway, singularly mortified, while the rest of the class finished the singing period. (Also, you didn’t want to miss anything Mrs. Meldrum might say – grey hair swept up in a bun, when a pupil misspelled a word during public recitation she’d say, “Whoops, he popped a boner!”)
I generally got along, and liked it most when everyone else did too. I still do, notwithstanding unforeseen eruptions when passing through data-free political zones, so prevalent lately.
So I don’t think of myself as particularly disruptive. That said, I’m a business woman, and gay; business has been a straight boys club for millennia, so being a woman, let alone a lesbian, in that club – in that club room -- is by its nature, disruptive. My calm presence in that paradigm is disruptive.
Which turns out to be a good thing. Experts agree that disruption in this context drives innovation. And with recent research suggesting that women in leadership are often superior innovators, and that diversity drives better business results, you can understand why most forward-looking companies are falling all over themselves to be more inclusive.
So how’s that going? Well, according to people who track these things, from McKinsey/LeanIn.Org to Mercer, not so well.
Public perception parallels the data: recent polling reveals that the public thinks that the chances of achieving gender parity among CEOs for the Fortune 500 are the same as our landing on Mars.
This is reality, and perception informing reality. The public needs to see more success, more women CEOs in that corner office, to know what’s even possible.
The power of the status quo. Many forces impede that progress, from our cultural mores around gender-driven job responsibilities at home to companies’ lacking the fortitude to adjust their work frameworks optimally to accommodate today’s family dynamics.
But foremost, to my mind, is simply the power of the status quo. The status quo is like an armed country, in its own right, and it needs to be taken seriously as an external threat. The foundation of the phrase describes not only the existing state of affairs but specifically, according to Webster, “the last and uncontested state of affairs that preceded a controversy and that is to be preserved by preliminary injunction.” The status quo isn’t passive; it’s loaded with tension, defensiveness, and possibility. It’s ripe for disruption.
Without some serious attacks on the status quo, we know that gender parity in corporate leadership is unlikely to change significantly in a generation, and at the CEO level, 100 years from now. 100 years!
So how to speed things up? For starters, companies need to create welcoming environments that allow people to be their authentic selves in the workplace, providing a powerful avenue for accessing talent, facilitating diversity in leadership, and driving innovation.
Welcome women on their own terms. Out Leadership, where I work, was founded 5 years ago with the goal of convening senior LGBT+ leaders in business, with the mission of helping businesses benefit from LGBT+ inclusion, while driving equality. Our member firms send both senior and emerging LGBT+ leaders to summits around the world, curated just for them. At any of these gatherings, what would likely strike you, as it did me when I first observed them, might be, Wow! Look at all the LGBT+ folks, suited up in one room! Heaven, particularly if you were male.
Because the other thing you’d notice is how few women there were, despite our aggressive pleas to firms to send more LBT+ women. As it happens, the gay business world is no different from the straight world, in how gendered corporate leadership is. Women within the LGBT+ population clearly need their own community and support to help them get traction and improve their proportionate representation the same way all women and other minority groups do, to make maximum contribution to their firms.
On other fronts, the Business School at Stanford recently launched the country’s first executive training program for LGBT+ leaders, a promising harbinger of how far LGBT+ diversity has come to be understood as a key business driver. Of 46 people in the class – chosen and sent by their companies for their high-potential leadership skills – 9 were women. (At least this beats the 15%/17% of top female executives and board members, respectively, of the Fortune 500.)
Orientation isn’t culture. Modern Family’s episode featuring the Venn diagram of sexual orientation neatly captures the gay men/lesbian divide; while our orientation throws us together as a minority/affinity group, as species LBT+ women and gay men are quite different. The implications to businesses are significant.
Networking, for example, is a crucial component to professional success. And there are no better networkers in the world than gay men, based on my anecdotal observations. On the networking spectrum, gay men occupy one end, killing it; the straight world is in between, of whatever gender; and lesbians are on the far, quiet side, keeping their heads down, getting things done, going home. And staying in the closet at between 5-10% higher margin than men, here and in UK (overall nearly half of all LGBT+ employees still are; among senior leadership, 70%). That’s a lot of value for companies to leave on the table, and they owe it to themselves to figure out how to engage with and motivate this LBT+ cohort.
At Out Leadership, our solution was to launch OutWOMEN.
Out women seek out women for community and role modeling. We sampled our LBT+ women members and found that senior-level LBT+ women were thrilled to be recognized and connected to peers, through off-the-record dinners, lunches and other special events. Just to be in a room together was both a revelation and celebration. Millennials were more blunt, telling us that:
- They’re dying for role models. Most of them did not know of a senior out gay woman in their global corporation
- They feel marginalized within the LGBT+ ERGs, which are typically more heavily populated by men
Now, OutWOMEN panel discussions put LBT+ women role models on display for these emerging leaders, and are open to all. We’ll continue to facilitate community at all levels while embarking on specific research so that industry can better understand how to find and serve the needs of LBT+ women, wherever in the world they live and work.
And when we start our Venus colony, all are welcome, once we’ve secured the beachhead — to take a page from Mrs. Meldrum’s songbook.
OutWOMEN luncheon group, Sydney, May 2016