Arbitrage

I had an epiphany today.  Those of you who talk to me often may say something like “what now?”  I have these fairly regularly.  Today’s ah-ha moment was being able to put into words what is in between me and career satisfaction.

I have worked extremely hard, over the past eight years specifically, to get to where I’m at today.  I have an executive-level title and all the responsibility to go along with it.  I have exposure to senior level leaders in my organization and have cultivated and maintained a personal brand that is respected, admired and preferred over others. I am sought out for the most challenging projects, for counsel on a broad area of expertise and very quickly instill in my teams a belief that they will be empowered, supported and heard, in spite of the fact that my tenure has been severely truncated in my most recent assignments.

Sounds good on paper, right?  So what’s the problem?  It’s this:  I don’t “feel” like an executive.  I put the word feel in quotations because it’s such an imprecise and unprofessional way to describe my frustration.  Or is it?

Since returning from the women’s summit my company held last week, I can’t stop thinking about the inclusion aspect of diversity and inclusion.  When corporations talk about their D&I programs, the focus is very heavily on diversity.  It’s the part that is easily understood, with a solution that readily presents itself.  Just add more diverse people and we’ll be a diverse organization. The problem is we’re not so well versed in inclusion.  Once our diverse team members are on the payroll, we don’t leverage them to the fullest extent.  This is especially evident at the executive level.

Corporate America has been male-dominated since the beginning of time.  Business practices, protocol and perspective are all filtered through the male lens.  It’s so ingrained in both sexes that most of us don’t even realize the extent to which gender bias has permeated our culture. 

Women are literally shut out of a huge piece of the relationship-building component, which is key to success at the executive level, because it is socially acceptable, expected even, for  business to be conducted on a golf course or at an after-hours social event.  I’ve often asked myself how I’m expected to connect with my married, male client when I am a single woman.  Especially when the most visible example of another woman’s attempt to bond with her married, male client fed the rumor mill for months, culminating in an assertion that the two shared a hotel room on a business trip.  A friend told me recently that she is vigilant about her behavior in the few social situations she’s included in because she doesn’t want to give anyone a modicum of fuel for that fire.  Sadly, the people around us are making their own assumptions, regardless of what we put out there.

What’s happening is that the women who make it to the top surrender themselves.  They assimilate into the male culture in order to break the glass ceiling.  Only the really tough ones make it.  It takes a certain caliber of woman to transform herself, mastering the rules of the male game. I have nothing but respect for these women and the personal sacrifices I imagine they’ve made to achieve their stature.  But it’s not who I want to be.

“Feel” is the right word.  It’s the right word for women.  How women feel about the work they do and perceive their value in an organization has everything to do with why they remain with an employer.  I don’t feel like an executive in spite of my skills, my title and my ability to complete the most challenging of client deliverables because I’m lacking equality in compensation and the social connection that comes naturally to men.  You’re not truly an executive without the complete package.  At a time in my career when I should feel on top of the world about my accomplishments, I feel empty, wondering what all the hard work was really for.  The rewards that go with the hard work, which are the money and hanging out with the in crowd are out of my reach.

Deutsche Bank published a white paper in 2010 on gender balanced leadership that says this:  “Employers eager to capitalize on their investment in women allow women to get to the top staying themselves, not having to borrow the style of their successful male colleagues.”  This is a very astute observation that gets to the heart of inclusion.  It’s acknowledging that some very common business practices are inherently exclusive in today’s world.  It’s recognizing we can’t just title women without addressing the imbalance in rewards. It’s finding ways for our diverse talent pool to contribute on their own terms. Improving diversity at the executive level by promoting more women is a temporary fix.  Attrition will be right behind us on the ladder if we don’t address inclusion.  Employers figuring this out will be the employers of choice for women.

This is a complex problem that remains unsolved in the business world today. It’s also the next place I’m going.

I sent two e-mails on this topic today:  One to the man who heads up the diversity and inclusion council at my company, the other to the woman who runs the leadership development consulting business where I’ve been mentoring women.  One of these avenues is going to put me in a position to lead an effort to create inclusive environments that put women on a path to get to the top just by being themselves. 

I will feel like an executive.  I’ve worked too hard not to.