Women in Leadership: The Barriers, Biases and Solutions: Interview with Leadership Coach Kelly Algier
Illustration by @max_gps
Women in Leadership
Podcast Transcript:
Stefan Guttensohn:
Hi, my name is Stefan Guttensohn, and welcome to The LOOK.Legal Podcast. Today's podcast is different than our usual topics. We usually focus on an industry, but today we'll explore an issue that affects many of them, the under-representation of a specific segment in corporate leadership, women. Why are women, who are half of the population, not regularly half of a typical board of director or half of your typical senior corporate executive body in a corporation? I was speaking with a client recently, and the question arose about the passage of a particular bill that became law in California, SB-826, the Women on the Board's Initiative. This law required that public companies in California have at least one woman on any board of director. The bill was passed into law, as I indicated, but it was subsequently overturned by the courts. So the question was, what can we do to ensure greater representation of women?
I was speaking with a colleague just yesterday, and she indicated that she was working for a fairly well-known institution. This is a public institution that prides itself on its DEI initiatives and touts that it has 40% representation with respect to women in senior executive levels and on the board. And this person told me that she was the last woman to be terminated from that company. The issue of women serving in leadership positions is not new. The issue seems to be pervasive, irrespective of which country we're talking about, except perhaps for Iceland or some fairly narrow exceptions. And the issue seems to continue unabated. So the question is, what can companies do to diversify and include underrepresented segments, especially women? I have with me here today, Kelly Algier, to discuss this very topic. Kelly is a certified leadership coach with a master's degree in organizational psychology from Harvard University. Over the past 20 years, she has held leadership positions in two Fortune 500 companies, a top management consulting firm, and a tech startup. She has worked in Boston, Montreal, Johannesburg, and currently resides in Munich.
Her passion is people, and she coaches leaders to navigate their complex environments and situations, enabling them to become inspirational, authentic, and impactful leaders. Welcome to the podcast, Kelly.
Kelly Algier:
Oh, thank you so much, Stefan. Geez, I actually kind of feel exhausted after you read my resume. But yes, you summarized it very nicely. Thank you for having me here.
Stefan Guttensohn:
Yeah, I wanted to bring you on because you've had the opportunity to study this issue, not just from an academic perspective, but also from a professional perspective. You have your own insights, having worked in large institutional entities, and I would assume you've gained incredible insight into the issues facing women trying to move up the corporate ladder. So I want to begin with a few basic questions. Could you define C-suite for our audience?
Kelly Algier:
Well, actually, I think the easiest definition of C-suite are those people that are making decisions that are affecting employees and customers and society at scale.
Stefan Guttensohn:
Oh, I see. So that's a bit broader than just anybody with a title that has chief in it. So your definition's a little more functional.
Kelly Algier:
It's very functional because you can have a company of 300 that has a CEO and a C-suite of five people, and you can have a company of 200,000 that has a C-level as well. So we just have to make the distinction of company size.
Stefan Guttensohn:
From your perspective, what is it like to be a female senior executive who's seeking to be promoted to the C-suite. And say they're... We're not talking about someone who is entering the workforce, but someone who has worked their way through management, and perhaps is just like one or two degrees away from the C-suite. They're right there. They're just about at the point of entry. What is it like for them right now?
Kelly Algier:
Wow, great question and a loaded one. I'd say that my experience to answer this question comes from coaching women and really understanding the challenges that they face. It's a complex topic, what we're talking about, Stefan, because it has to do with leadership, gender, and biases. It's a very complex topic, so I'm going to rely on the framing of barriers that women face. I'm going to rely on in one of the books that I liked called Creating Gender-Inclusive Organizations. And management literature showed barriers of three type. One is the discrimination view that women are discriminated against by policies and procedures. The other is the preference perspective as a barrier that were held back, well, actually, that we simply have different interests and values that different from men. So that would include the perspective that maybe at one point, we don't want to climb the organizational ladder. The third perspective is the work-family view. And we can't ignore that that is a barrier potentially holding women, is that many of us still are responsible for 80%, in fact, statistically, of the domestic and family household responsibilities.
And I'm going to add to this that this is even more complex because what about society and how society sets us up for success and society's definition of what a leader is? And research still shows, and the evidence still shows that we as a society still have a male archetype in our mind as leader. So we still define a leader as male.
Stefan Guttensohn:
Do you feel that there is one perspective that dominates?
Kelly Algier:
If I think about coaching women that have made it that far up the corporate ladder, I feel it's the leadership topic that we still define leadership as male with the following characteristics, bold, assertive, sometimes charismatic, sometimes narcissistic. And these characteristics show up more often than men, and it's a kind of an overconfidence that you would see at that level in the organization. And I know that from a research perspective, those are not typically characteristics that women have. We are more inclusive in our leadership and have a different style. So I think what I'm coming to slowly is the double bind that you may have heard of, that there's an expectation that we're kind and nice, but at the same time, leaders at that level are expected to be dominant and assertive, and that creates a tension in women. And I feel that tension when I'm coaching them. They bring that to the table quite often, especially when it comes to organizational transformation.
Stefan Guttensohn:
Would a possible solution be to encourage or to coach women to be bold, to be assertive, to be narcissistic, and overconfident? Is that a solution?
Kelly Algier:
No, that's definitely not a solution. Women shouldn't be changing. In fact, research shows that we have great leadership qualities, emotional intelligence, the ability to build teams, and these are important qualities for leadership. So what I'm saying is as a society, we have chosen overconfident leaders, but it hasn't gotten us in a good spot. We have to think about how we define leadership and how we choose people to be in leadership positions. It's definitely not about changing women. It's about understanding our definition of leadership and challenging ourselves, and developing a kind of leadership competency radar where we're putting the right people into leadership positions, those that have great leadership qualities, which are high self-awareness, empathy, agreeableness, humility. These are qualities that research says women actually outperform men on these qualities. You mentioned the success of the men in their roles, but I'd like to elevate the discussion to the success of the company and what that means for society to have, and let's talk statistics here for a second, 80% of positions of decision-making power, or 80% of positions in company positions of influence are still held by men.
So let's just take a moment and look at the performance of companies and the performance of society. Where have we gotten? Where has that led us to? I don't mean to be too preachy here, but I think a state of the union might cause us pause and say maybe we should try it out with a 50 50 representation. So we were talking about the 80 20 balance, how the reality is that 80% of positions of power are still held by men. And where has that led us to? You can really look at society, or you can look at performance of companies. What the research is showing is that when you have a higher percentage of women and positions of power, it's great for companies. It increases financial performance, it reduces risks, and even increases corporate social responsibility. So I would say why not try it? That's my perspective.
Stefan Guttensohn:
You mentioned that 80% of corporate leadership is dominated by men. Would you happen to know what the percentages are for, say board of directors?
Kelly Algier:
Yeah, there are a ton of statistics. And in fact, the World Economic Forum even drills down by level and by country. And I'm so happy that you brought up Iceland. I hope we talk about that in a moment. Yes, I believe the current statistic is, if we look at CEOs of Fortune 500s, less than 5% are women. And when I quote the statistic that less than 20% of positions are held by women at the senior level, I'm talking about board, C-level, and C-minus-one, so senior VPs. Specific to boards, I don't have that statistic.
Stefan Guttensohn:
So we have selected the wrong characteristics as a society. Generally speaking, we have selected the wrong characteristics in our search for leaders.
Kelly Algier:
Yeah.
Stefan Guttensohn:
And what you're saying is we need to come up with a new standard. You referred to the leadership competency radar. Could you explain that a little bit more?
Kelly Algier:
Yeah, that's a really, really important topic. So instead of questioning, and we've been questioning for so many years, why are there so few women in positions of power? And positions of power, I remain with my definition, those in decision-making positions, the top of a public sector or private sector. Instead of asking why there are so few women, why don't we start asking, why are there so many men? And that's where I come to the conclusion, along with our organizational psychologist, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, how did we get here? Why are there so many men? And if we look at how we're choosing our leaders and how these leaders behave, I come back to the adjectives, bold, assertive, sometimes narcissistic. There are statistics around how many people in top positions have narcissistic personality disorder. How did these people get there? Well, they were promoted there. So we are choosing leaders based on the wrong qualities.
And companies have lots of statistics that show that not only is there questionable financial performance when women are under-representative, but there are lots of statistics that show 75% of employees quit because of their boss, or 85% of employees report stress and anxiety because of their boss. I think we're doing leadership wrong, and that's why we need a different kind of radar to be able to define what is good leadership. That's what I'd love to question. What is good leadership?
Stefan Guttensohn:
This is really interesting because I think about a number of our clients who are smaller businesses that have grown. The leadership comprises of the founders. So it's not people who've worked their way up through charisma or self-promotion, but people who have built their own businesses, and they're now the president of their own company, but what they need to do is bring in talent. And it's a question of how they identify talent, and all they know is what they did. And it sounds like from what I understand is they have to understand or they have to be able to identify those characteristics which will help exploit their company to its fullest potential.
Kelly Algier:
Exactly.
Stefan Guttensohn:
Yeah. So the question is, what are these traits and characteristics that comprise this leadership competency that make up this radar that you're talking about? You mentioned EQ. Is it identifying people who can manage people? Is that what we're talking about in terms of EQ?
Kelly Algier:
Yep. So here, I would like to bring the topic of Brené Brown's work on authentic leadership. Brené Brown, a social psychologist, has done a lot of research, very recent research, answering the question, what is good leadership? What is good leadership? And yes, it's those characteristics, those qualities that I just listed, high self-awareness, emotional intelligence, managing others, being agreeable, having humility, being vulnerable, having integrity, being able to connect with others, even being coach-like as a leader. So these are qualities that we need to develop a radar for because they're showing up as being effective in the long-term and in motivating people and getting teams to reach their goals.
Stefan Guttensohn:
I see. And this would be in addition to the classical characteristics that we're looking for, such as subject matter mastery or perhaps the basic skill of a leader, being able to select their own talent when they know that they don't have the particular skillset, bringing in the talent underneath where they're lacking, right? That would be your basic core, and we're discussing here are those additional missing elements. Is that correct or am I misinterpreting it?
Kelly Algier:
Yeah, no, I really like the topic that you just brought up, bringing in people that have competencies. A good leader hires people that are more competent than they are in certain areas. And what does that take? That takes humility, that takes self-awareness. These are really important qualities. And yeah, great leaders have that ability.
Stefan Guttensohn:
The state of the globe with respect to representation or under-representation of women in corporate leadership, I would assume that it's worse for women who are also members of visible minorities.
Kelly Algier:
Yeah, absolutely. So that topic has been researched, and it's called intersectionality. So there's lots of understanding now about how not only gender plays a role in leadership or our work lives, but also our race, our socioeconomic demographics, our education. That's called intersectionality. It's an even more complex topic, but absolutely, that's... You're really touching on some big topics today, Stefan.
Stefan Guttensohn:
What are the unique challenges that women face that men simply do not that add complexity to this topic?
Kelly Algier:
Yeah, that's an interesting one. It has to do with the fact that we're the ones that have the babies. And I had like to cite a model that I'm going to borrow it from Avivah Wittenber- Cox, where... She's a woman that's done tremendous work on understanding gender at work, and she simplified it as following, women have kind of four stages to their career. In your 20s, you're ambitious, you have this decade of exploring, you get your degree. You're independent. How exciting. And then in your 30s, if you decide to be a parent, you have this culture shock, I experienced that, where potential of your career and parenting, they just crash against corporate kind of cultures and systems, which include policies, and it's very stressful time. And in your 40s, if you're lucky enough that your kids are getting older, you have a kind of an acceleration point of your career. You can refocus on your career priorities.
Your kids might be in their early teens. You've got some more time to build up that foundation. And lastly, there's the period in your 50s of self-actualization where sometimes we're surprised, including myself, that you have this new drive and focus for your career. So many women experience this a peak time in their career. And men don't have the same trajectory. Men's careers are slightly more linear than a women's who's... If you can imagine, it's kind of this ascending wave climbing a corporate ladder where you exit, you repatriate, if you will, into the company. If you have another child, you're exiting and you're repatriating. This means that women are facing incredible transitions, not only in just in dealing with their own physiology of having created a human, but they're having to transition out of the workforce, back in the workforce.
That's an incredible complexity for which I'm very glad to offer coaching support. It's one of the many topics that we talk about with women in coaching, is how to do that effectively, how to build active and supportive networks, how to find role models that work, that have done it successfully, how to negotiate that balance of work at home so that you're still able to thrive in your job and you're able to thrive at home. That takes a lot of negotiation skills with a partner.
Stefan Guttensohn:
In terms of your own success, I'm curious, do you attribute your success to your mother, or even your father? Is there a role model that brought you to where you are today?
Kelly Algier:
Oh, wow. I've done a lot of reflecting on this lately. Absolutely. I think success, I would put in quotation marks, but I'm happy where I am and I absolutely attribute that to the opportunities that I had in growing up, to the good relationships that I had. I'm very thankful to my mom and my dad. And I wanted to actually reflect on something, a challenge that I've been dealing with. When I grew up, my dad empowered me like you can't imagine. He said, "Kelly, you can have anything. You can do anything with your career. You can be anything you want." And yes, that is true, but I underestimated the complexity of marrying children with a career. Because of that over positive messaging, I completely underestimated how difficult it is to have a family and an international career.
Stefan Guttensohn:
You mentioned that your father gave you this overly positive message, and then you were hit with reality. At what point in your career did you identify these obstacles?
Kelly Algier:
I have to reflect on having the second child. So I have three. I did not feel it so much with child number one. I had some great child care in South Africa. Then we moved back to Germany, and I think that's where it really hit me, when I had my second child. I had an addition... So we were talking about intersectionality. I had the additional challenge of cultural differences here. So that's something that we haven't talked about too much, is every country's different, and I definitely did not feel like society supported me in being a working mom. Just simple things like child care, very difficult to find full-day child care. There is a bit of an attitude at the time, an attitude, this is more than 15 years ago, remind you, in the south of Germany where I'm living, that a mother's workplace is at home. And structurally, everything points to that. A mother should be at home.
A lot of homework is done in the afternoon with children. So I think that was two very difficult years for me, after I had my second child, to try to have a career without having those structural components in place to support me. So yes, I have my personal experience. If I can just for a moment, look at the data, what we're talking about is gender inclusive climates, right? Gender inclusive climates. And there's a lot of data that shows that Iceland is doing very well at creating gender inclusive climates, both in companies and in society. They have, according to the World Economic Forum, just about reached parity. That means 50-50. In fact, one of my favorite books, Stefan, is called The Secrets of the Sprakkar. And Sprakkar is actually an Icelandic word for extraordinary woman. I had goosebumps the first time I heard that. I was like, "Send me there. I want to work there." Because that just goes... To get to 50-50 gender parity, they've done a lot.
And that book actually by fellow Canadian, Eliza Reid, she happens to be the first lady of Iceland, she wrote the book based on a lot of research and understanding, how did they get there? So I'd like that the listeners hear that it can be done, and Iceland seems to have a lot of the secrets around how. I've lived in America. A lot of your listeners are going to know the challenges that women have. They go back to work from a very short maternity leave. There aren't that many corporate policies that support part-time work. It's quite phenomenal that for a developed country, the system, if you will, makes it so difficult for women to have a career and a family. Canada does a tiny little bit better. And it's a work in progress, but I wanted to mention that Iceland for me is the absolute bar of gender parity.
Stefan Guttensohn:
Because Iceland has achieved such parity, are you aware of what that means in terms of its industry or commerce?
Kelly Algier:
Yeah. The data shows that it's been great for companies' economic performance, and it makes happy people, happy thriving people.
Stefan Guttensohn:
I want to ask you a very personal question. Can you share an example of a situation where you were faced with a blatant case of gender bias that you overcame?
Kelly Algier:
It's not maybe as blatant as what our listeners might like to hear, but I can absolutely give you an example. I think that's the challenge in discrimination and bias, is that it's not blatant. So I was working in the leadership team of a tech startup, and I just felt like my voice wasn't heard. That's the best way to describe it, and I could only put it in those words. Years after I left, I felt my voice is not being heard. Why is that? And for me, it was such a subtle. It shows up so, so subtly. It shows up in being interrupted. If you're sitting, let's say in a decision-making circle, and you're being interrupted repeatedly, or your ideas are being hijacked, or you're being ignored, or you get an eye roll. At the time, I thought, my goodness, it must be me. It must be my performance.
Now we're going to talk on the... I'm pretty sure you're going to ask me something about skills, but I was really very, very hurt by the situation. And yeah, I see now that very much, gender bias played a role because of how I was showing up. And my takeaway is I learned a heck of a lot. I educated myself on women's behaviors at work, and now I help women to find their voice and to recognize these patterns of what might be happening that they didn't shine a flashlight on until now.
Stefan Guttensohn:
I've heard those same throughout my entire career as well. I'm not surprised by what you're saying. What is your opinion of the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in women trying to achieve corporate leadership positions?
Kelly Algier:
I'm never shocked when I hear the anecdotes of women saying, "My boss is coming on to me at the bar late at night after we've had a meeting," because I believe the statistics are nine in 10, nine out of 10 women have experienced sexual harassment in their lifetime.
Stefan Guttensohn:
Why did you decide to start assisting women? I guess I didn't mention this in the introduction, but you do have a focus on female corporate executives.
Kelly Algier:
Yeah, how did I get here? It was kind of selfish because I wasn't having fun in working in male dominated environments. I just wasn't having fun, and I had so many questions. Why is it like that? Why is it so difficult for women? Actually, that's the reason why, first of all, I got a degree in organizational psychology, to be data-driven about this and to answer some of these burning questions I have. Why is it so hard for us to have our voice? Why do we sometimes get ignored? What can we do about it? And I just believe that women have so, so many strengths and bring so much to the table. I feel that under representation means under leveraged.
Stefan Guttensohn:
How do women enrich corporate leadership? You mentioned some of what they bring to the table that men don't have, but more generally speaking.
Kelly Algier:
Yeah. You know what? I sum it up as diversity of thought, just diversity of thought because of who we are, how we're socialized, what our values are, our needs are different. So having more women brings diversity of thought. How can that not be enriching to a dialogue, to a conversation, to an outcome?
Stefan Guttensohn:
There's no question that the statistics demonstrate there is a gap, there is a gender gap. There is under representation of women. There's under representation of visible minorities. What can corporations do to fix it? How do corporations address this issue?
Kelly Algier:
So I think we're coming back to the topic of how do corporations, if we put the onus on them, right? Because the onus is on a lot of... We talked a lot about a lot of things. We talked about society and how we have to look at how we define leadership. But if we just look at the company, how do you create gender inclusive climate interventions, if you will? I think some of the obvious ones are practices and policies to prevent discrimination. So we're moving the needle there, right? Practices and policies around women returning from maternity leave, supporting menopause and women's transition there. I first came across this myself in working with Unilever, that they are a menopause-friendly workplace.
And I asked my friend who works at Unilever, "What the heck is that?" And she said, "Yeah, there's an organization," that's actually now active in the US, by the way, it's called Menopause Friendly Workplace, and they make sure that policies are in place and organizations to help women that are going through that transition, usually it happens over 40, to still thrive in the workplace, be that policies that allow women to take off a spontaneous mental health day, policies allowing them to rest during the work week. Lots of companies are doing wonderful things around policies. Then there's leveraging women's talents as a second kind of block, and that really is established through company culture.
And the last thing is to create a kind of socially supportive environment for women. For instance, we haven't talked about psychological safety, to make sure that women's voices are heard, that they are a part of decision-making, that they feel that they can speak up on matters that are important to them without backlash or stigma. So that's what I see that companies can do. But as I said, I think the topic's a little bit more complex than that because I would add the reflection of how we choose our leaders in the first place. And there, we don't only have HR's role, but we have everybody's role. How do we choose the people that get these positions in public sector and private sector?
Stefan Guttensohn:
You mentioned before the competency radar, so the leadership competency radar. So I suppose you're referring to policies that would encourage hiring practices that focus on a greater breadth of characteristics and traits, correct?
Kelly Algier:
It's interesting. If you look at the sort of phases of HR or the phases of an employee's life, it's the hiring, and it's the retention, and it's promotion. I have to say on the hiring level, the data is showing that women are 50% of positions. So entry positions, first line managers, we've pretty much got parity there. It's only when you climb the organization. So then we're talking about issues of retention and promotion. As you go up the corporate ladder, that ratio of women drops from 50 to 40 to 30 to 20.
Stefan Guttensohn:
Then how do you train the decision makers at the highest levels to expand their scope of that they need to look for to include what you refer to as that leadership competency radar? How do we get them to do it?
Kelly Algier:
Yeah, maybe it's looking at really the performance of the leaders with a different lens, looking at their performance and looking at their performance as leaders. What is the engagement level of their employees? How is the retention of their talented people? It's having different KPIs, if you will, so key performance indicators, on their performance.
Stefan Guttensohn:
Oh, so there'd be some level of tracking in the business, identifying what their particular KPIs are and seeing if they're achieved on a regular basis?
Kelly Algier:
Yeah. And stock listed companies have a horrible track record of being terribly short-sighted and setting very limited KPIs, which is profitability next quarter, profitability next quarter. That's not a very long-term view that perhaps is not the best for society and for employee wellbeing.
Stefan Guttensohn:
You know what it sounds like to me? I feel like what we're saying here is we need to encourage some greater form of transparency within the business where we're identifying what we're looking for, we're identifying targets, hiring targets, and we're seeing if they're achieved, and so more people are aware that the company is either achieving or not achieving, and so they can do something about it. It does sound like transparency.
Kelly Algier:
I would support that.
Stefan Guttensohn:
There are two trends in HR and employment law in the last few years that have really taken hold, particularly in the United States. And I'm wondering if they at all encourage reducing the gender gap. And they are, first of all, unlimited holidays. Is this something that would improve the ability for women to work?
Kelly Algier:
I'm going to look at a little bit more micro level and say what does make a difference is flexible working hours. So I can't say too much on the unlimited vacation. I have heard of that before, but I am a big fan of flexible working hours. So what does that look like? It's like you sign a contract for 40 hours a week, but you don't need to do this between nine to five because you might have childcare obligations, dentist appointments. Maybe you're working from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon, taking a two hour break, and then working those few hours in the evening. I know plenty of European companies that are offering these flexi hours, and that is a great way... We were talking about hiring, retention, promotion. That's a great way to retain talent, talented women in those childbearing years, to offer the flexibility to have synchronous and asynchronous working hours.
Stefan Guttensohn:
There are other internal programs which I think we touched upon before, and that is an employee resource group. Could you explain that?
Kelly Algier:
Yeah, so employee resource groups are a great way to allow women to get together and do practice sharing. You might invite a role model woman from the company or from external that has some insights to share, employee resource group or special interest group. They're known by corporations by these terms, and they just support women in allowing women to get together on a regular basis. Some companies are even taking that one step further and offering these groups coaching. So I mentioned mentoring, but there's also the possibility that companies offer coaching programs, be that individual coaching or group coaching on certain topics that are often challenging for women, like setting boundaries, delegation, mindfulness, wellness, how to navigate roles at home. So companies are doing a lot in that space.
Stefan Guttensohn:
So an ERG, an employee resource group, is essentially a support group? Is that it, or is it a networking group?
Kelly Algier:
I'd say it's both. It satisfies the objective of resourcing, networking, support, connections.
Stefan Guttensohn:
Oh, I see. So it provides employees, or employees, say just women in a company, an opportunity to talk amongst each other, and then they can discuss issues without going outside and worrying about revealing anything?
Kelly Algier:
Absolutely. I can give you a concrete example. So I was working with an engineering company, and they had... There were about 4,000 employees. They have an employee resource group, totally volunteer, and it happened to be 200 women that raised their hand and said, "Yes, I want to be a part of this employee resource group." And so the women that led the group identified, around Christmastime last year, that the women were having a particular challenge and balancing work life, and their stress levels were very high because it was also annual performance evaluation time. And so they offered for the women in the ERG group, a group coaching on the topic of setting boundaries to help the women reduce their stress levels, understand, how can I renegotiate, how can I say no to the pressures of their life? And so within that context, you can see that the employee resource group was about skill building. It offered skill building, networking, connections. It fulfilled many objectives.
Stefan Guttensohn:
We have run out of time, so thank you for your time. We were speaking with Kelly Algier, a sought after business coach who appears regularly on the lecture circuit. If you want to reach out to her, Kelly's email is kellyalgiercoaching@gmail.com.
Kelly Algier:
Thank you so much, Stefan. Thank you for having me.
Stefan Guttensohn:
Thank you. Until next time, everyone.