The Performance Improvement Blog

Matthew Effect Hits the Glass Ceiling

Women are not filling the executive ranks at the same rate as men and the reasons appear to be arbitrary and unrelated to performance. DDI’s Center for Applied Behavioral Research conducted a study of women executives and summarized findings in the report, “Holding Women Back: Troubling Discoveries and Best Practices for Helping Female Leaders Succeed.” They write:

…a review of the demographic data revealed that organizations were not evenhanded in their treatment of male and female leaders. The women—more than one-third of the global sample of over 12,800 leaders—had not progressed nearly as far up the management ladder as the men. This discrepancy isn’t a surprise; it has been reported frequently in popular media. What caught our attention was how the deck is stacked against women from the start of their management careers.

Structural discrimination starts early. Men are more likely than women to be considered management material. Far more men in line management positions receive the coveted but often secret designation, high potential (HiPo). The HiPos receive more encouragement, sometimes being directed into special training and multi-national management experiences. As these managers move up the ranks, the gap between the percentage of men and women at each level continues to increase. Women who are promoted without the grooming that HiPos receive are set up for failure.

This is the “Matthew Effect” first identified by the sociologist Robert Merton and explained in Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book, “Outliers.”  (To paraphrase Gospel of Matthew 25:29:  the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.) Gladwell uses the example of many young Canadian hockey players who are unlikely to achieve stardom simply because of having the misfortune of a late-in-the-year birth date. So too, many talented women managers will not break through the glass ceiling simply because they had a boss who did not consider them high potential at the beginning of their careers.  

What should companies do to correct this situation?

Diversity Training...Does It Work?

The record for diversity training programs is not good. In a T+D article titled, “Why Diversity Training Doesn’t Work…Right Now,” Aparna Nancherla concludes:

Various studies have shown that diversity training is ineffective. It’s not always just the training itself that is flawed. Sometimes it’s also the program’s context and delivery. Some of the major shortcomings include limited understanding of the scope of the issue, coverage of only legal and compliance aspects, and lack of buy-in from senior leadership.

However, before indicting all diversity training, we need to make distinctions among the different types of programs and their purposes. It’s one thing to spend two hours on explaining harassment to a group of managers; it’s quite another thing to spend three days trying to make employees more tolerant and accepting of each other. Both are considered diversity training but they are apples and oranges.

If the intent is creating teams of mutually trusting and highly engaged employees, we have evidence that this can be done. I had the opportunity to interview employees who had been through a three-day, diversity training workshop intended to achieve this goal. My interest was in the impact of the workshop on business results. I heard a story from a manager about how, prior to the workshop, he would fire any employee who showed the slightest bit of negativity in the workplace. One employee, in particular, was very close to being let go. After the workshop, he met with this employee and talked with her about her situation and what she needed to do to be more successful at work. She became one of his best workers. We can calculate the value of that learning to the company. It's substantial.

Another story I heard was from a manager who, prior to the workshop, was losing money on a contract he had with a partner company in another country. The partner company did not appear to be fulfilling its responsibilities in the agreement. The manager had just assumed that employees of the other company understood his expectations and assumptions about contracts. After the workshop, this manager decided to have a conversation with the partner and discovered that they viewed contracts differently due to culture and language. This resulted in a new working relationship and a new agreement that became profitable for both companies. We can calculate the value of that learning to the company. It's substantial.

We know how to make training work. To do so we need to be clear about intended outcomes, align the training with those outcomes, create a context in which that learning is supported and valued, and follow-up to measure impact. This is true of any training, but even more so when we are trying to influence deep seated values and prejudices.