Joanna Barsh | The 2021 MAKERS Conference

Author and Director Emerita, McKinsey & Company, gives an update on the state of women in the workplace.

Video Transcript

JOANNA BARSH: Hello. We have so much to go through in such a quick period of time. You know, people, we're just getting started. It's going to be a fabulous conference. Let's go.

You know this chart. You understand the talent pipeline from Lean In and McKinsey & Company. And guess what? Here's the good news. If you look past the last five years before the pandemic, you would see that we are gaining at every single level in the pipeline, that women are almost 50% of the entering management track class. And we're over 20% at the C-suite.

And look at the plus signs. Everywhere on the bottom-- plus 2, 1, 1, 2, 5, 4. Fantastic. And then the pandemic happened. Oh, boy. What a year it's been. You know as well as I do the 32 million cases in the US and many, many more around the world, the deaths that have rocked our nation, our world, and still happening. And yet 86 million, probably more today, have been vaccinated. And we're heading towards herd immunity if we can.

At the same time, we had the unemployment crushing economy from the lockdown. And we have 6% of all adult women who are unemployed, which is pretty much double what it was before the pandemic. And if you're a woman of color-- Asian, Black, or Latina-- you had an even higher level of unemployment. In fact, a couple of million women had left the workforce altogether. And you know that unpaid labor is not even in these numbers. So that's something like $1.5 worth of work if you put it at the minimum wage. Over 5 million people lost their jobs. These women left the workforce. At one point, we thought it was a she-cession.

What has left us post-COVID? White men still have the power. They're only a third of the entering class. They're 70% or more of the C-suite. And it's really hard to be a woman of color. I've shown you here the same data cut a different way, which is that women of color are about 38% of the entering class and 14% of the C-suite. So that's a real funnel, if you would. It starts wide, and it sharply goes down. Even at the first level of manager, it's really sharply down.

And if you looked at white women, you would see more of a pipe, more of an even flow of women until you get to the very top. So it's harder to be a woman of color. This is not to say that this is a zero-sum game for women. It's a pie, and we just want a bigger share of it. What's wrong with that? If you look at women of color, and in particular Black talent, Black men and women have it harder than everybody else. If you look at attrition or you look at promotion, what you're going to see is that many more Black men and women leave at the entry level and at the managerial level. And many fewer are getting promoted compared to white men and women.

So that's why we did more research. For the last couple of years, I've been talking primarily to Black men and women rising through that pipeline. Over 80 interviews completed so far. These are a slightly different than the earlier ones because these are about the individual's personal and professional experience at work. And what did I find? I found a profound gap in connection. This is so much more than what we have all believed. If you're a Black woman in the audience, I think you know better what I'm talking about than I am, which is that it's a lack of connection to the system, a lack of connection to the leadership, a lack of connection to bosses, and a lack of connection to peers, for the most part.

Most people have this who are Black at the organization-- not everybody, because this is, of course, qualitative research. We can close it by working together to create what I'm calling real community, which is not belonging and inclusion, although that's a part of it. Let's see what it is. It is the strongest form of connection at work that you can imagine where you feel the trust collectively to the system, to the leadership, to the bosses, to the peers, everywhere we have trust. And we have individual agency to be at our best more of the time at every level.

And what do we get if we work towards this? We get performance, resilience, and fulfillment improvement not just to ourselves, but the whole company improves. And if you're a leader and you're not looking for that, what are you looking for? How do we do it? Let me start with four actions for the company, and within that, four actions for you, whoever you are. It starts at the top, for sure. Leaders start within, and they have to lead. They have to lead with purpose.

They have to be explicit about the mindsets and behaviors that will get their organization to this next level. They have to be diverse at the top. You've got to get on with it. It's pretty straightforward what you have to do. I'm not going to waste time here.

And you have to adjust the work so that diversity is not an add-on. It's integrated. It's part of talent management. And talent management is one of the most important levers that a company has. What can you do, you in the audience? Can you be the catalyst to help leaders have that epiphany that allows them to go, wow, I had no idea that was going on in this organization?

If you can get to that, and you can do it with love and kindness and directness, you are unbelievable. And I know you can do it because that is what we need in order to lead to sustained action. OK. Number two-- critical mass. We need a lot of leaders. If you're a company with a couple thousand people, you need several thousand leaders to create critical mass. Remember the 25%. 25% of the company has to shift its mindset and behavior. So start looking for the people who already have the new mindsets and behaviors. I find out who they are.

And then figure out the roles that your organization needs. I'm going to show you a bunch in 2 seconds. And then unleash the power of agency. There is nothing like the magic of people when people feel that they are on fire, and they can be at their best more of the time. How do you do that? You fill the organization with the roles that are needed to support the talented individual to be at her best and rise.

And you can be in those roles too, whomever you are. Are you a role model? Are you the owner of the initiative? Are you connecting people together to, in fact, improve the performance of each one? Are you the translator who tells everybody what management really means when they say x? Or perhaps you're the caregiver, the cheerleader just giving people the energy they need to keep going, to be courageous, to take risk.

And perhaps you're the talent agent. That's one of the roles I love to play, which is to promote those people around you who are so good. And you see it, and you explain it to others. These roles are all needed in a company. And white men find people to play these roles for them-- more men, not all white men. I know if you're in the audience, and you're saying, ha, nobody ever helped me, well, then you'd be the exception.

OK. Number three-- we need a culture that has a social contract that actually values trust. That doesn't happen today. What about listening? I'm not just talking about listening to prove that you're wrong and I'm right. That's not listening. That's debating. I'm talking about difficult conversations where we come with mutual respect and understanding. And we hear each other, and we deal with those topics at work.

And what about support circles, whether they're lean-in circles or trust circles or leadership circles or learning circles or your little board of directors? I don't care what you call it. Get it. OK. You have agency. Don't tell me there's nothing you can do. You can help others trust you more. You can actually be a better listener. You can go get those skills and be a coach to help other people have those difficult conversations, and you can gather the support. There are people in this organization who do want you to succeed. Who are they, and are they on your team?

Finally, complexity-- remember, I've been talking about complexity for years. Nobody ever understood what I was saying. And I didn't understand what I was saying. Now I understand it. Agile is the way to go here. What does that mean? Instead of planning the perfect diversity playbook for a year and a half, let's figure out all the experiments, and let's get going and test and learn and adapt.

And by the way, build in energy recovery because this takes a ton of energy. What can you do? I've laid out for you a very simple agile process that starts with pain points, prototyping, experimentation, then onboarding the people who are going to get it done, and the process to learn and adapt. And what do you want to be? Do you want to be a stakeholder, a brainstormer, a designer? Do you want to be the organizer? Maybe you want to be the doer.

I don't care. Get in there. Let's do it together. You can do it. What are your next steps? Think about what excites and energizes you the most. Take that step back. Figure that out. And then figure out the smallest step tied to that excitement that's going to have a big impact that you want to take. And then think about what might be stopping you from taking that step and who can help you break through.

That's it in a nutshell. I hope you have a great conference, and I just want to say props for you, because we are keeping going. Hey, people. We are just getting started! Thank you.