Greater inclusion at the top strengthens company performance

Even decades into a successful career, respondents still described enormous effort – conscious, deliberate, intentional work – to obtain and sustain their membership in their organizations. These pressures increased rather than decreased with their career success and mobility. The higher they climbed, the bigger the spotlight became, the more pressure they faced to contort themselves in ways that minimized their difference from the majority.  

These cultural performances were not the only cost they had to pay in order to achieve membership in their careers. Many of these respondents had experienced glass cliff appointments: promoted to leadership roles following a scandal, or in the midst of bankruptcy or following a major recall. They were hired to signal that their companies were heading in a bold new direction or to clean up the mess their predecessor had left behind.  

They were clearly well-prepared to lead through crisis because they had been doing so almost from the start of their careers. These leaders told us that from early on, they recognized that they were highly visible due to their gender or race/ethnicity. As tokens and outsiders, they carried a heavy burden of doubt with regard to their competence, work commitment and leadership potential and they recognized this burden could prevent them from attaining senior leadership positions. 

In order to overcome this bias, these future leaders had to strategically negotiate their careers in ways that minimized their visibility as outsiders and emphasized their competence as leaders. In other words, they had to be exceptional. And they had to take on the most high-risk jobs in order to prove their competence as leaders. 

Our respondents described long careers characterized by risk: volunteering for high-risk jobs nobody wanted, moving laterally to clean up a scandal, moving into a leadership role in a branch of the company that was at risk of failing. They described these assignments as “a mess”, “a powder keg”, a “hideous environment”, a job “other people would have run from”. 

The strategic pursuit of risk – what we term a “risk tax” – came with a heavy price. Respondents understood that a single misstep could derail their careers by reinforcing negative stereotypes about their competence and ability. One Black woman executive called this the “one mistake rule”, describing her view that a single mistake could erase years of competent leadership in the minds of her peers and colleagues.  

Another male Black CEO described this perilous path like this: “You have to have a flawless run. The African Americans who make it have had many opportunities to derail. They did not derail. [Otherwise] that person has the opportunity to decide between you and the other person, [and] they’ll take the other person.” 

Despite these risks, these leaders accepted the price of conditional acceptance and built reputations around crisis management. They weren’t just good leaders; they were leaders who could lead their companies through crisis, and this skill set created opportunities for them that would not otherwise have been available.  

This risk burden is only one of many challenges women leaders and leaders of color must overcome. Previous research found that these CEOs received less support, had shorter tenures, were more likely to be forced out and more likely to be targeted by activist investors. Perhaps not surprisingly, these leaders had lower job satisfaction, higher rates of depression and were at higher risk of underperformance and disengagement.  

These findings, combined with our research on the career trajectories of CEOs, suggest that bias in organizations leads to a significant loss of highly successful leadership capital. Those who survive this high-risk path to attain top leadership roles do so at great personal cost and professional risk. Though they have a prized skill set that sets them apart from their peers, they are often dissatisfied and discouraged that they are fighting the same battles today that they were fighting a decade or more ago.