diverseo unconscious sealing women in leadership

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The unconscious sealingWomen in leadership

In partnership with


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BEHAVIOR

WOMAN

WHITE

IMPLICIT

PERFORMANCE

EXPLICIT

MAN

BLACK

TALENT

GEN Y

SENIOR


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grow ng n n er vers ty as one o t e r toper o s ave gepriorities. The : gender diversity more generallyusiness case is therrepresents a vast, But after countless programs, mil-, untapped potential.

ons spent n tra nv nc ng co eagues o t e mpor-ng, ours spent cotance of doing the tion is creeping in.right thing, frustr The statistics or ema e part c ce or examp eat on n t e wor o are not moving.

Recent progress in s clues as to why this is the case.mind sciences offer

ore mportant y, so uey po nt to e ect ve t ons.

u gment a o process. ost peop e e eve t eypeop e s a comp exare as object nly do not differentiate based on gen-e as can be, and certai

er. e n . ut un e nown to us, our ra nn we now w at we tes ecause we only have access to a smalldifferent decisions. This is

rocesses. The brain directs a number ofshare of the information that itat ca y, suc as r v ng, wa ng, eat ng,act ons t at we execute auto

t conscious of our movements and some ofetc. While driving, we areac ome w t out pay ng attent on to t e roa .s are even a e to come

, we consciously gather and treat information from his orTo judge a persoance and past behaviors. But we are also significantly influencedher aby automatic brain processes, unconscious biases which seal our judgmentof others and ourselves. The unconscious sealing is a lock preventing usfrom discovering people in front of us. More particularly, this process sealsour percept on o women n compan es. oug most managers are awareof female leadership skills, they unconsciously exclude them from top posi-tions influenced by cultural a priori.

It is now possible to measure the impact of these unconscious processes,an t e resu ts are str ng. or examp e, we recent y too an nterna-tional sample of 800 business managers across various industries, levels

of experience and functions. The vast majority of men and women explicitlybelieve men and women are equally effective leaders. However, when itcomes to their implicit or automatic associations, they tend to recognizeea ers p more eas y n un nown men t an n we - nown ema e ea ers

such as the Presidents of Brazil or Argentina, the Prime Minister of Australiaor the Managing Director of the IMF.

Diversity action plans have most of the time focused on conscious processesan sregar e t e power u mpact o unconsc ous ases aga nst women.

We all need to act. The point is not to fix the women through leadership

seminars for them to become effective leaders. The changes required aremuch deeper. And they are worth it, not only because they are the right thingto do but also because they simply make business sense. And now, for thefirst time, the recent progress in social mind sciences allows us to actuallyc ange t e automat c percept ons we eve op a out ot ers.

ince 6, verseo as wor e w t em nent researc ers to eve opeffective business approaches to this issue. We help organizations-businessesbut also governments- grab the potential of effective diversity manage-ment. In 2012, we partnered with the Womens Forum for the Economy andSociety to expand our research and share our ideas.

Nathalie MaligeE


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ITS TIME FOR CHANGE!

Most CEOs see the ability to leverage a wider pool of talents as a key strategicadvantage. More and more, the best performing corporations considergender diversity (and diversity at large) as a core performance driver, andmany have made significant investments to capture it.Yet actual progress in the demographics of gender diversity is extremelylimited. This is true even in corporations with a relatively high number ofwomen at the top, which are often regarded as benchmarks in diversitymanagement.

To better understand these disappointing results, Diverseo conducted aglobal study on perceptions of gender and leadership, measuring attitudestowards women and leadership both on the explicit (i.e. conscious) and theimplicit (i.e. unconscious) level. Opening the door to the implicit level, weused a test based on very recent advances in mind sciences to ask male

and female business managers how they relate notions of leadership withtwo sets of characters: well-known female leaders (such as Julia Gillard,Cristina Kirchner, Chanda Kochhar, Christine Lagarde, Irene Rosenfeld,Dilma Rousseff, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Zhang Xin)1 and unknown men.

While most people explicitly believe men and women areequally effective leaders, they tend to associate leadershipmore strongly with unknown men than with recognizedfemale leaders.

At the explicit or conscious level, most respondents believe men and women

are equally good leaders; most of them believe that when it comes to it, theythemselves make objective career related decisions about women.

At the implicit level, the picture could not be more different: the same re-spondents tend to associate leadership much more strongly with unknownmen than with world-famous and recognized female leaders. It is as if thebrain was on autopilot.

A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that such automatic, uncon-scious associations strongly shape our actual attitudes and behaviors. Thus,when it comes to choosing between a man and a woman for a leadership

position, even if the woman has actually demonstrated better leadershipskills, the man will still probably be promoted. Non-promoted femaleleaders will often adjust and tend to opt out as a result.

c

1Julia Gillard: Pr ime minister of Australia; Crist ina Kirchner: President of Argentina; Chanda Kocchar: Managing direc-tor and CEO of ICICI Bank; Christ ine Lagarde: Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund; Irene Rosenfeld:Chairman and CEO of Kraft Foo ds; Dilma Rousseff: President of Brazil; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: President of Liberi a anda Nobel Peace Pri ze recipient; Zhang Xin: CEO of SOHO China4



nterest ng y, resu ts a en younger ane not s gn cant y erent etweolder respondents. field: that timehis belies a classic argument in thi

ill solve the iss stronger femalee as younger men are more open anleaders ar fore suggests that,n their formative years. Our research thern act, action is needed.

diversity initiatives haveThis study helps explain why even some of the bes

n s ea ers p s s w tery m te mpact: t ey o ten ocus on womfor women. Such initiativesarious actions such as leadership seminarnforce the prevailing automaticcan sometimes be useful. But they often r

y ev enc ng t at women nee a -assoc at on o ema e w t su or nateleaders. They also usually completelyditional training to become effectiv

automat c or unconsc ous percept ons oa to a ress t e ma e ea ewomen.

or e first time, recent progress in mind sciences providesan opportunity to effectively change mindsets and trulyleverage gender diversity.

For the first time, it puts this massively significant and untapped perfor-mance lever within reach. For the first time, integrating business consult-ng an m n sc ences prov es us w t an e ect ve way orwar . et s co -lectively begin acting to create a more inclusive world for all: its the rightthing to do, and it makes business sense!

Organizations that want to begin tapping this potential should thus takeactions on the basis of scientifically backed approaches. Some innovativecompanies have used such breakthrough approaches to change:

reate responsibility for change, Build awareness for implicit associations which can potentially

amper women s pro ess ona progress on, Collect numbers: measure the potential and understand what the

organization could gain by better leveraging all talents andproport ona y promot ng women t roug out t e ran s,

Ensure that HR processes support and favor objective decisions, hape the environment with organizational changes that will

sustain long term attitude and behavioral change.

For example, one of these companies has recently increased the numberof women among expatriate general managers from 15 to 35% in only 36mont s.

5



GENDERDOES IT TAKER?TO BE A LE

What should a good leader be? Reassuring, smart, experienced, calm,serious-looking and male!

While most people consciously believe that men andwomen are equally good leaders, in fact, they tend to reco-gnize any random well-dressed grey-haired serious-loo-king man as a leader more than famous female leaderssuch as Julia Gillard, Dilma Roussef or Christine Lagarde.

= 7 Explicit Implicit

Stronger association betweenmen and leadership 20

Neutralassociation

6

Stronger association betweenwomen and leadership

55

2

While most people explicitly believe men and women are equally effective leaders,they implicitly tend to associate men with leadership

Explicit versus implicit answers in the general population (%)

Source: Diverseo Womens Forum leadership IAT June-October 2012;Explicit data Which sentence bes t reflects your option? ; Implicit IAT leadership Diverseo analysis

Why does this matter? It does because research shows that the uncon-scious drives our behaviors. When making a decision about a promotion toa leadership role, implicit associations will lead the majority of businessexecut ves to appo nt a man nstea o a woman, even w en t e womans actually a more effective leader. This also matters because it results inwomen checking out: several studies show that women tend to adapt toenvironments where they are most often not expected to play a leadershiprole, and that they adapt their behaviors to prevailing stereotypes. Whilemany peop e are conv nce women ave n erent y erent ea ers pstyles, the latest longitudinal research shows that women adapt their lead-ers p sty e to t e r o requ rement. omen are o ten encourage to ta e

jobs where so called female values are required for success, thereforefulfilling (and reinforcing) the prevailing stereotype.

However, when women take roles that require an assertive, so called mas-culine style, they adapt their leadership style and act as expected and re-

quired to succeed on the job2

.

oreover, w e men an women ave t e same types o assoc at ons otat the explicit or implicit levels, men tend to have an even stronger associa-tion of men with leadership at the implicit level.2Through the Labyrinth, Alice Eagly and Linda Carly, the truth about women who become leaders, Har vard Business School.6



Men N = 24 Explicit Implicit

Women N = 47 Explicit Implicit

Stronger association betweenmen and leadership

26

Neutralassociation

69


5


7

Neutralassociation

68


5

4

21

30

6

20

1

At the explicit level, people believe men and women are equally effective leaders. At the implicitlevel, men and women associate men with leadership (even more for male respondents)

Explicit versus implicit answers in the male and female populations (%)

Source: Diverseo Womens Forum leadership IAT June-October 2012; Explicit data Which sentence best reflects your option?;Implicit IAT leadership Diverseo analysis.

Time will not solve the issue.

Our study shows that age and number of years of experience have verylimited impact on implicit perceptions.

N = 7 2 Implicit


Neutralassociation


50

Age has no significant impact on implicit perceptions

Implicit perceptions of women versus men leadership across age groups (%)

Source: Diverseo Womens Forum leadership IAT June-October 2012; Implicit IAT leadership Diverseo analysis.

26-35

36-50

51+18

2

9

2

21

31

30

7



Our analysis evidences that respondents from differentfunctions (e.g. marketing, human resources, engineerin andoperations) or sectors (e.g. consulting, financial services,media, IT and telco) have different implicit associations ofgender and leadership.

Marketing and HR have almost neutral implicit association of gender and leadership whileengineering and operations have a stronger association of men wit h leadership

Explicit versus implicit answers Functional analysis (%)

Source: Diverseo Womens Forum leadership IAT June-October 2012; Explicit data WhiImplicit IAT leadership Diverseo analysis

Men extremely moreleaders than women

Moderately

Moderately

lightly

lightly

omen and men equallyffective leaders

Women extremely more

leaders than men

3

N MKT + HR =

N EN + P = 5 Marketing + HR

Engineering + Ops

Explicit Implicit

12

24

7

56

3

2

0

19

18

17

1

20

25

9

8

6

2

i h sentence best reflects your option?;

8



Some sectors have a stronger association o f men with leadership

Explicit versus implicit answers Sectorial analysis (%)

rum leadership IAT June-October 2012; Explicit data Which sentence best reflects your option?;o analysis.

Men extremely more leaders

than women

Moderately

Moderately

lightly

lightly

Women and men equallyffective leaders

ly moren men

23

1

7

11

7

7

69

6

2

3

2620

20

2

10

1

2

5

19

11

9

11

4

onsut ng =

N Financial ervices =

N IT,Tel , Media = 4

Consulting

Financial ser vices

Media, IT, Telco

Explicit Implicit

Diverseo SAS 2012

Source: Diverseo Womens FoImplicit IAT leadership Diverse

Women extremleaders tha

9



Surprisingly, in the Roussef, Lagarde and others vs. unknown men test,identifying the female leaders does not seem to have much impact on thestrength of the association of women with leadership.

Identifying the female leaders in the test did not increaseparticipants association of women with leadership.

Recognizing female leaders has very limited impact on respondents implicit perceptions

Implicit perceptions and number of women leaders pictures recognized (%)

Source: Diverseo Womens Forum leadership IAT June-October 2012;Picture number Do you recognize any of these individuals ?; Implicit IAT le

Men extremely more leadersthan women

Moderately

Moderately

lightly

lightly

Women and men equallyffective leaders

Women extremely moreleaders than men

Men extremely more leadersthan women

Moderately

Moderately

lightly

lightly

Women and men equallyeffective leaders


24

20

17

8

13

6

5

5

4

N =0

N =3

Number of women leaders pictures rec

22

22

12

5

=1

4

21

N = 572

More than 5

Identifying the female leaders in the study has however had an unexpected,

slightly surprising impact. When respondents recognized more than 5 fe-male leaders, they also tended to recognize the unknown men included inthe research (halo effect).

adership Diver

gnized

5

12

=

as owev

ents recognize t e un now

20

7

13

eo analysis

22

10

20

22

5

3

=More than

r a an unexpecte ,

ed more than 5 fe-men nc u e n

10


11/32 Diverseo SAS 2012iiiDiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii erseo SAS 2012

Illustration of the halo effect: when people recognize more female leaders pictures,they also recognize more unknown mens pictures

Number of unknown men and women leaders recognized (%)

Source: Diverseo Womens Forum leadership IAT June-October 2012; Picture number Do you recognize any of these individuals?

N = 89

20

1

2

6

6

6

7

UM BE R F M EN PI T UR E R E NIZE D

Y PE PLE WH RE NIZED M RE THA N 5 W MEN

N = 103

NUM BE R F ME N P I T URE RE NIZ ED

BY PE PLE WH RE NIZED W MAN

0

1

7

2

2

3

4

5 0

6 0

7 0

8 0

More significantly, the study confirms one very interestingfact: role models could be effective.

In line with research on the malleability of implicit bias, men wih femalemanagers have a lower association of men with leadership. Direct, frequentprofessional interactions with female role models within the organizationshould be encouraged.

Role models could be effective: manager gender has a significant impact on leadership

perception by menExplicit versus implicit answers for male population with male or female manager (%)

Source: Diverseo Womens Forum leadership IAT June-October 2012; Explicit data Which sentence best reflects your option?;Implicit IAT leadership Diverseo analysis

Male withMale manager

Male withFemale manager

a e w t mae manager =

a e w t ema e manager =

Explicit Implicit

5

6

16

66

4

2

24

13

13

20

16

7

4

5

Men extremely moreleaders than women

Women and menequally effective leaders


Moderetely

lightly

Moderetely

lightly

11



WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP:A CLEAR PROFIT DRIVER

Gender diversity is a significant, yet massively untapped,

performance lever.

Companies with more women at the top are more profitable. For example,a Catalyst study demonstrated that gender diversity at the top is correlatedwith higher shareholder returns3. Companies with 20% of women in execu-tive committees generate 34% higher shareholder return than companieswith 2% of female leaders. Well-managed diversity does improve perfor-mance.

In fact, beyond gender, well-managed diversity has a positive impact alongthe entire value chain (including diversity of thoughts, nationalities, social

groups...).

Well-managed diversity has a positive impact on the entire value chain

Source: Diverseo analysis

IP:

3Catalyst study, The bottom line 2010

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4Cultural Diversit ys Impact on Interaction Process and Performance: Comparing Homogeneous and Diverse TaskGroups. Warren E. Watson; Kamalesh Kumar; Larry K. Michaelsen. The Academy of Management Journal, 1993.

5Sommers, S. R. (2006). On racial diversity and group decision-making: Identifying multiple effects of racial compositionon jury deliberations. Jour nal of Personality and S ocial Psychology, 90, 597-612.

6Kalev, Dobbin and Kelly study, Best Practices or Best Guesses? Assessing the Efficacy of CorporateAffirmative Action and Diversity Policies, 2006.

7Catalyst study, US Women in Management, 2011

Research also demonstrates that diverse teams generate more ideas thanhomogeneous teams (by 13% over a 17-week period4). They also make bet-ter decisions than homogeneous ones, making fewer mistakes (7,28 mis-takes in reporting facts made by homogeneous teams of jurors versus 4,14by diverse teams of jurors5).

However, capturing the potential and additional perfor-

mance from diversity is not straightforward.

Enhanced managerial skills are required: newly created diverse teams areoften initially unstable and quite less effective than homogeneous teams.When assembling a team to reach a quick decision, for example in a crisissituation, a homogeneous team is therefore a better option. Over time,diverse teams will tend to adjust and mimic homogeneous teams, settingor using similar operating processes. After a few weeks, some diverseteams will transcend themselves and leverage differences to capture theperformance potential behind diversity.

Many corporations have made significant investments toattract and include a diverse workforce.

Each year, American corporations spend $9bn just on diversity training6. Yetthe vast majority of diversity and talent management initiatives have limitedimpact in increasing the diversity of senior executive teams. For example,while women earn 60% of masters degrees, at the current pace, it will take 90years to reach parity in boards7.

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LOOK ME IN THE BRAIN

Why cant we tap the potential of women in leadership?Its in our minds!

Research in social mind sciences has shown that our brain operates verymuch like a computer with two processors:Our explicit processor. We call it level 1 of mental operation. It is the onewe are familiar with: rational, deliberate, thoughtful. We can explain whatwe think to others.Our implicit processor. We call it level 2: automatic, impulsive, unthinking.Level 2 performs familiar motor tasks (driving, tying shoes, walking).But it also processes massive amounts of information, and impacts, with-out us being aware, the functioning of the Level 1 processor.

Our mind: a computer with two processors

To put things simply, we control level 1 but we do not control level 2. Andlevel 2 processes much more information than level 1.

In particular, social interactions are always initially level 2 operations. Eachtime we see someone, we automatically and instantly attribute certain

characteristics to this individual, without even being aware of this process.Such attributes will be drawn from our culture or previous experienceswith people from the same social group. Sometimes these attributes will

LOOK ME IN T

Why cant we tts in

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not correspond to the specific individual in front of us. And these attributeswill shape our behaviors.

Mistakes we make by attributing the wrong characteristics to one spe-cific individual or situation because of general perceptions of the group towhich this individual or situation belongs are called implicit biases. Oursocial perceptions are very much impacted by implicit biases.

Implicit perceptions, i.e. level 2 mechanisms, are strongbarriers when it comes to womens representation in topjobs.

Research shows that implicit expectations of a manager will drive his/heractual behaviors with his team members. In return, they will tend to adjusttheir behaviors to their managers perceived implicit stereotypes.

For example, if we live in a culture with a strong prevailing association of mathwith men, the differences in performance in math between boys and girlsat the age of 13 will be stronger than in countries where prevailing associa-tions between math and men are less strong. This is because, unconsciously,teachers will focus more effort on boys in the former culture than the latter.Similarly, our experience shows that if a manager unconsciously believes thatwomen are poor leaders, chances are that the women reporting to him willindeed be poor leaders.

Most diversity and talent management initiatives focus onlevel 1 and on women. Recent progress in mind sciencesmakes it clear that level 2 mechanisms minimize our abili-ty to leverage all talents. We all need to act to create a newparadigm in talent and diversity management.

Many gender specific programs such as womens leadership seminarscan help their participants; however, they often reinforce the perceptionthat women are poorer leaders than men, since these programs considerwomen need extra help to become good leaders. This activates stereotypesand quite often makes things more difficult for women. Telling managersto change through traditional diversity training can have the same effect: atbest does not help; often it reinforces stereotypes as categorization mecha-nisms are impulsive and automatic8.Implicit biases have a high impact on our ability to identify, assess and

manage talents on a daily basis. We do actually evaluate two peoples po-tential or performance differently based on our own implicit perceptions ofwho they are9.Decision making biases have a substantial impact on performance: not onlydo they limit our ability to select the most competent candidate for aposition, but as expectations drive results they also actually reduce theperformance of subordinates about whom we are biased.

8Kalev, Dobbin and Kelly study, Best Practices or Best Guesses? Assessing the Efficacy of CorporateAffirmative Action and Diversity Policies, 2006.

9Implicit Discrimination in Hiring: Real World Evidence. Dan-Olof Rooth. Discussion paperseries.Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Ar beit. Institute for the Study of Labor. April 2007. 15



The integration of recent progress in mind sciences withbusiness consulting provides a novel opportunity to boostperformance by reducing the impact of automatic mindmechanisms on our decision making processes.

Automatic mental processes are highly powerful and cannot be overridden.

Identifying them and developing HR processes that reduce their negativeimpact is probably one of the most effective levers to develop more diverseleadership groups.

Implicit biases have massive impact across all performance levers withinorganizations; it is very important to address them in a systematic and dis-ciplined way in order to capture the potential value from diversity:At the top executive level: if top executives implicitly associate women withfamily instead of career, they will not consider bringing women into leader-ship as a performance lever (on average, 75% of the people we tested showa stronger implicit association between women and family),At the employees and middle management level: if managers uncon-

sciously associate performance with presence, most work-life balance ini-tiatives will tend to fail and the value potential of many women will not becaptured within the organization,At the client level: if employees are biased against specific regions, mar-kets or categories of clients due to cultural or racial issues, organizationswill not be able to capture these clients.

For example, activating stereotypes within teams reduces performance bymore than 20% for quantitative tasks.

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Organizations can follow a three-stage approach to help women grow in theworkforce and thus capture incremental value:1. First and foremost, build awareness and shape the business case2. Second, collect numbers to target the actions3. Third, transform the environment

Build awareness andshape the business caseGenerate senior management buy-in and instigate beha-vioral change for top executives to lead by example.

A diversity management initiative is a deep and long-term corporatechange management program. In our experience, starting with an aware-ness seminar for the Executive Committee is the most effective approachto shape such major programs.

The seminar needs to be carefully prepared with the CEO, after an initialanalysis that often includes a mix of interviews, document reviews andsome quantitative analysis to measure the magnitude of change needed.The preparation is essential, because the CEO must be seen as commit-

ted already during the executive committee seminar. As part of the prep-aration, we have found that it is essential to coach the CEO so he/she canshare a genuine commitment and lead by example. Indeed, he/she shouldconvince the top team of the relevance and importance of managing diver-sity well, but also be ready to set clear expectations to all. In our recentexperience, the impact of such sessions is generally strong and generatesdecisions that are as diverse as the organizations that undertake them.

Set diversity as a strategic enabler to capture all talents andclients.

The business case for diversity should be surfaced and discussed, possiblyembedded in a compelling statement. Most people tend to limit the busi-ness case for diversity to the need to attract and retain the best talents.

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE TOHELP WOMEN TAKELEADERSHIP ROLES?

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With several of our clients, we have identified and shaped much more com-plete business cases that are clear value drivers. A general roadmap with keypriorities to shape the environment and engage behavior evolution should beagreed upon during the session, with a clear assignment of responsibilitiesamong executive team members.

The integration of strategy analysis and frameworks with tools derived fromhigh level research on how the mind operates provides very powerful con-tents to shape a tailored change management program. It helps to put in

perspective how managing diversity in general and more specifically howreducing the impact of implicit biases can contribute to the achievement ofstrategic objectives.

Successfully demonstrating the impact of diversity on performance andbuilding the diversity business case is key to obtain senior executive buy-in.This will ensure diversity is integrated in company management with a levelof priority adapted to its expected impact on performance. The diversitybusiness case should demonstrate how managing diversity can help iden-tify and capture all potential clients. For instance, some market segmentsmay not be considered as potential markets due to employees implicit

biases (e.g. relatively poor areas in some countries).

Implicit biases are specific to each organization. Actions to reduce theirimpact should therefore be well adapted to each organizations strategicpriorities and business case.

Client insights

For one of our clients in the consumer goods industry, an individualsession for the CEO immediately led to massive changes in the genderdiversity policy. The CEO asked the Human Resources and Diversity

Directors to develop an action plan to increase the number of women intop jobs, especially among expatriates. The organization also reshapedits 10-year strategic plan to better capture a diversity of consumersand create altogether new market segments, including targeting thepreviously neglected bottom of the pyramid. This led to creating newspecific R&D teams, redesigning client segmentation approaches andadjusting product development processes.At another of our clients in the industry sector, a session for the execu-tive committee instigated behavioral change in key succession planningdecisions made by the Executive Committee. It also led to a major

change in their high-potential identification process and subsequentlyin most of their human capital processes and criteria.

In the financial services industry, a session with the CEO resulted inworkshops with the top 300. Senior executives in all business linesstarted systematically integrating diversity in their day to day opera-tions. Significant value was generated. In the private banking divisionalone, it led to a review of their analytical approach to prioritize clients,a training of private bankers to reduce implicit biases when dealingwith female clients and the redesign of some of their key products afterrecognizing that women had a different approach to managing theirwealth. This program led to a substantial increase of female client

satisfaction as measured by that clients longstanding barometer anda clear market share in that segment.

18



Collect numbers to target the actionsCollect demographic data.

Companies often do not have a precise idea of how diversity fails to take hold.Thus, when designing diversity programs, they often are reduced to one sizefits-all approaches. However, to be successful, targeted actions need to bedesigned on the basis of rigorous, scientific data analysis.

Quantitative analysis should be performed based on demographic andhuman resources data in order to better capitalize on all talent and iden-tify the potential value that the organization should strive to capture.

Quantitative analyses are useful to understand the actual root causes for theorganizations inability to fully leverage its talent pool. They also enable tosurface the gap between the assumptions that organizations make about rootcauses for the lower probability of hiring, promoting or retaining women andthe actual patterns. When conducting such analyses, we found that the wider

and deeper the data, the more accurate and relevant the action plan.Most people believe women decide to opt out to take care of their families.This is sometimes true. However, our client work has evidenced several otherpatterns: in some organizations, few women are hired but once employed,are equally developed and promoted. In others, women get promoted in rela-tively large numbers to middle management but do not progress beyond(the glass ceiling). This not only contributes to a misleading perception thatmore women make it as the number of women grows steadily, but also leadsmany women to decide to opt out, as they realize that opportunities are notforthcoming.

Few women hired butequally promoted

Pattern 1

Share of women droppingat Senior Manager level

Pattern 2


Women Men

Analyst

VP

Associate

Manager

GM

21 79

20 80

17

15

14

83

85

86

Women Men

48 52

49 51

42

19

13

58

81

87

sgu se

c ent examp e

19



Organizations should also go beyond drop-out points. We found thatcommonly observed patterns of middle management behavior often had theirroots at entry level. Typical questions, such as do women benefit from thesame development opportunities? should be addressed. Additional dynamicanalysis should also be considered both to understand the root causes ofthe problems but also to set achievable targets, in line with human capitalbusiness needs.

Example of fact-based demographic analysis: women do not leave more than men but

are less promotedTotal* company headcount movements to team leader, from 2007 to 2011


Total headcount

Headcount:men(% women)

Headcount:women(% women)

Male

Female

sgu se

c ent examp e

Numberin levelat startof 2007

134(38%)

358

224

Experiencedhires to

level2007-2011

53

28(35%)

81

2007+totalintake

2007-2011

295(35%)

557

852

Other

35

Numberin levelat startf 2011

190(38%)

311

501

Leaversfromlevel

2007-2011

79(36%)

220

141

Promotionsinto levelbetween

2007-2011

280

132(32%)

412

Promotionsout oflevel

2007-2011

134

166

32(19%)

Client insights

For example, one of our clients believed that women were leavingto have a baby. Our analysis showed that women were less likely tobe promoted beyond middle management, and that, as a result, evenvery promising women opted out. This finding completely changed theapproach: retention of young mothers had no impact; the client movedto an approach more focused on the promotion of female middlemanagers.

A wider data set also enables to evidence the subtle impact of implicitbiases in human capital management. For example, the high-potentialpool of a Fortune 500 company had very few non Anglo-Saxon womenand no Chinese or German high potentials. While the senior executiveteam believed a major overhaul of the complete process was needed,we found that most of these profiles were disregarded as a result of acompulsory cognitive test. This test was presented by the vendor asdiversity compliant. However, its compliance had been validated in theUS. As cognitive patterns differ according to education styles, people

with diverse non Anglo-Saxon profiles had much lower probability ofsucceeding at the test. They scored very poorly on the derailers.

20



Collect attitudinal data with a focus on implicitattitudes.

A mix of interviews and business IATs (Implicit Associations Tests) canhelp identify positive and negative associations about women within or-ganizations.

Corporate culture shapes attitudes and implicit biases on specific social

groups, sometimes even more than the culture of the country in which onelives. We have found that for each social group, some of these associationscan positively contribute to professional advancement; others can actuallyhamper it. Identifying those positive and negative associations has allowedsome of our clients to develop much more effective diversity initiatives.

Implicit associations about women are sometimes in complete contradictionwith implicit associations about performance. Mind mapping can be used torepresent specific attitudes that need to evolve for an inclusive environment.

Comparison between implicit associations about women andimplicit associations about performance


sgu se

c ent examp e

Women

Technicalexpertise

Physicalappearance

Clientcoverage

Flexiblework

Family

Technicalexpertise

NA

Clientcoverage

Availability

Career

Performanceas a seniorexecutive

Identifying implicit biases can be extremely tricky. Diverseo has developed aninnovative interviewing approach to surface automatic associations aboutspecific social groups. While most people genuinely believe they are fair andobjective, many have unconscious associations that are in direct oppositionwith their explicit values. Such associations can represent a clear barrierto leveraging a diverse workforce. They are the result of a combination of fac-

tors such as culture, whether corporate, functional or country culture, andimmediate personal experiences.

After a number of interviews (typically between 30 and 150 depending onproject scope), general patterns can be identified within each organization.Biases based on corporate culture (e.g. implicit associations related to whatit takes to succeed, but also engineers versus marketers, front versus backoffice, etc.) may be stronger than automatic associations about social groups,nationality or gender. The same implicit associations can thus be relevant invery different regions within organizations.

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Use customized Implicit Association Tests to quantify andprioritize implicit associations.

Research shows the IATs can be effective to instigate the process of be-havioral change. 80% of people who take relevant and related IATs beforemaking a decision are more objective than people who do not take thetest.

IATs need to be carefully selected as people are not biased in general buthave specific implicit associations about specific social groups.

Client insights

Business IATs are an open door to level 2 in business as illustratedby several client examples. For instance, one company had focused formany years all its diversity initiatives on improving women leadershipskills mainly with leadership seminars for women. The numbers were

not moving at all. The results of the customized tests we developedand other findings in the diagnosis showed that most people in thiscompany had no issues associating women with leadership. However,they did have a strong association of women with family and men withcareer. The company refocused its efforts on addressing this prevail-ing association.

Overall, performing a cultural scan is therefore necessary to understandeach specific context. One need to surface conscious and unconscious cor-porate values and attitudes with face to face interviews, analysis of key mes-

sages but also small cues that employees perceive in their work environ-ments, workshops and document/process review.

Transform the environmentReducing the impact of implicit biases in talent management requires acomprehensive program, whose various elements reinforce each otherand are aligned to:

Foster more objective decision making, Address organizational and structural barriers, Shape the environment through corporate culture: communication,

values and role models, Develop effective training programs with sustainable impact over time, Set the right KPIs.

Client insights

Business IATs are an open door to level 2 in business as illustratedy severa c ent examp es. or nstance, one company a ocuse or

many years all its diversity initiatives on improving women leadershipskills mainly with leadership seminars for women. The numbers were

not mov ng at a . e resu ts o t e custom ze tests we eve opeand other findings in the diagnosis showed that most people in thiscompany a no ssues assoc at ng women w t ea ers p. owever,they did have a strong association of women with family and men withcareer. The company refocused its efforts on addressing this prevail-ing association.

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Foster more objective decision making.One of our proprietary tools called the HR Process scan aims at identi-fying how to create, refine or adapt HR processes (from the general to thespecific) to increase their objectiveness and efficiency.

Research and our years of experience with organizations have evidenced that

even HR processes which are perceived as best practices often reinforce theimpact of implicit biases instead of reducing it. As identifying the best com-petence is even more important in the current context of economic crisis inmature economies and high turnover in some emerging economies, settingup decision making processes that reduce the impact of implicit biases shouldbe a clear priority: we all tend to unconsciously apply automatic patterns whenassessing someones performance or deciding about a promotion, outside ofthe guidelines of HR processes. These automatic mental processes are highlypowerful and cannot be overridden just by deciding to be more objective. Iden-tifying them in light of prevailing implicit biases and developing HR processesthat effectively help decision makers reduce their impact is probably one of themost effective levers to develop a more diverse leadership group.

While there is no one size fits all solution, some principles apply whenreducing the impact of implicit biases in human capital processes. The first stepconsists in surfacing potential differentiated treatments in HR processes: dosome people have lower performance ratings, potential ratings? Do specifictraining programs have differentiated impacts? Do people on part time orflexible work benefit from career schemes that are similar (while beingproportional to their working schedule)?

In many cases, these differentiated treatments result from a succession ofsmall cues, which, taken in isolation, would still allow objective decision

making, but whose accumulation, compounded by decision makers implicitbiases, most often leads to a significantly lower ability to leverage all talents.Some of the frequent factors we have identified in our work include:

An overall process structure that does not facilitate the gathering andtransmission of fact based performance information such as actual resultsobtained across different groups of decision makers, thereby opening thedoor for judgmental assessment of performance, Unclear criteria for decisions such as competencies framework withrather broad descriptions. These tend to induce different types of under-standing across different cultures, functions or genders, thereby openingthe door to differentiated ratings or career prospects for the same perfor-mance across various social groups, Supporting documents that tend to reinforce inferences. We have mainlyobserved three patterns: documents that provide upfront information that

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unconsciously triggers stereotypes or influences judgment such as pre-vious performance or potential ratings, education, photos or age (outsidethe US/UK/Australia), etc.; documents that provide too much information,swamping decision makers and leading them to rely on their own informal,subjective appreciation of the individual; documents that provide too littleinformation, thereby requiring open judgment to make decisions. Multiple cues in various elements of the process that tend to influencedecision makers outside of their own awareness such as quantity of text inself-assessments, the assertiveness of words used by evaluees

Decisions makers competencies and attitudes:- explicitly favoring their own social group in talent reviews- providing comments on people they have never worked with, still

influencing the relevant decision makers- allocating too little time to talent management, whereas the impact

of implicit biases tends to be strongest in fast decision-makingprocesses

Quite often, the differences between men and women but also across socialgroups are striking. Shaping the solutions requires a mix of analytical and be-havioral approaches. Beyond just shaping structures and documents, testing

the end products with real users by observing the impact of the target processensures significant impact.Beyond systematically addressing the issues identified in the diagnostic, themost effective process redesigns have led to the development of simpler, moretransparent processes. The criteria for decisions are also much more descrip-tive and provide much less room for interpretation. They are also much morefocused on actual performance thereby directly contributing to value creation.

Address organizational and structural barriers.

Most women manage a dual agenda. Despite a trend of increased participation

by men in household and family tasks, women still carry most of the burdenof raising a family. Helping women manage this dual agenda is therefore a keylever to enable them to develop as effective leaders.

Designing an effective work life balance scheme, one that fosters a highlevel of performance while allowing employees to better accommodatetheir individual needs is highly complex. It goes way beyond conciergeservices in head office.Some best in class organizations have designed flexible work schemes thathave simultaneously increased employee engagement while increasing thetotal number of productive hours. The success of such schemes comes froma structured analysis of how time is being used, taking a broad view of anindividuals time. Far from focusing on time spent in the office, this analysismust encompass all activities carried out throughout the day: its a 24-hourapproach. Most often, people tend to equate work-life balance with part-time.Best-in-class, effective flexible working time policies use a much wider mixof levers such as better leveraging working hours by eliminating some tasks,increasing total working hours by reducing commuting time, allowing peopleto work remotely. And very importantly, they have adapted their performanceevaluation systems. One important area is to dissociate performance frompresence, thereby providing employees more autonomy in managing their agendas.In addition, the most innovative companies have surfaced implicit associations

about performance and helped managers acknowledge their propensity toevaluate someones performance based on physical presence in the office. Thislast element has proved highly helpful in fostering behavioral change.

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Client insights

One of our clients, a Fortune 500 company, was falling behind itsgrowth targets in emerging markets. Local competitors were grab-bing local consumers and resources.Despite our clients superior technologies, these competitors simplyunderstood the local market needs better. When we looked at the

talent pool at the local level, we identified that in many countries, thebest and brightest of our clients local employees especially women left after a few years to join local companies, primarily becausethey did not see positive career opportunities and did not feel ade-quately rewarded.

We saw that our clients high-potential pool did not reflect its globalfootprint. Most executive committees were led by expatriates. A firstemployee survey showed that our client value proposition was notattractive due to lack of transparency in key expectations and careerevolutions, along with a lower financial offer for top performers thankey competitors. A more detailed analysis evidenced that HR pro-

cesses did not allow objective identification and reward of all talentswithin the company. They actually increased bias in decision making.

We created clusters of countries with homogeneous talent manage-ment skills and systems, and identified how decision makers wereactually making decisions in each cluster. Some clusters were un-expected: we found that Egypt, the UK and the US had very similartools; Australia and China used the same forced ranking process.Leveraging our proprietary toolbox, we uncovered explicit and im-plicit assumptions about various social groups within the company(nationalities, men/women, generations).

We designed tools to offset the impact of such assumptions. We setup working groups with a significant number of managers in mostkey locations to ensure buy-in, and coordinated the redesign of newbias-free decision-making processes. Such processes includedvarious elements to allow more bias-free understanding of key jobcontents, performance and potential.

We helped our client define a more transparent HR strategy, posi-tioning its value proposition vs. that of key competitors in both ma-ture and emerging countries and enabling more objective decision-making on key elements such as compensation. We also reviewed

all remaining existing HR tools and talent management processesto remove elements that could specifically increase the impact ofimplicit bias.A new, user-friendly IT system was designed. It integrated severalspecific elements to induce and accelerate change, such as allowingusers to save significant time on administrative tasks and sharingappropriate information across different locations.The implementation of the program started with in person trainingsessions for key decision makers senior management, HR andmandatory online training for all.

As a result of this project, the share of local talent in key countriesincreased from 22 to 29% in 24 months and the number of womenamong expatriate general managers from 12 to 19% in 24 months.

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Shape the environment through corporate culture:communication, values and role models.

Corporate culture should be adapted to foster expected behaviors. It is oftendifficult, even for the most senior executives, to precisely pinpoint the attri-butes of their corporate culture. Moreover, we have found that people oftentend to develop opposite explicit and implicit attitudes about specific and keycultural traits. In a number of cases, we saw that surfacing such implicit as-sociations is highly useful to identify actual corporate values and their impacton behaviors.

Our approach to manage corporate culture generally consists in setting newexplicit corporate values, improving corporate communication both internaland external and improving decision-making processes. Ensuring the visi-bility of diverse role models, communicating on the positive openness to dif-ferent leadership styles and coaching executives to become more inclusive isoften needed. Perceptions can evolve with a structured communication strategyand clear rules to ensure the visibility of counter stereotypical women.

Integrating open-mindedness and diversity in the companys core val-ues and leveraging role models is directly correlated with the successfulpromotion of diverse profiles at the top of the company.

Role models are key levers as female managers can act as counter stereo-types for both men and women.

Develop effective training programs with sustainable im-pact over time.

Organizations need to make decision makers aware of their implicit biasesthrough training.

Implicit bias training alone or fact-based decision-making processes arenot sufficient to cause perceptions to evolve. Once key implicit associationshave been surfaced, and awareness around the question of diversity hasbeen instigated among senior executives, the best training scheme to main-tain behavioral change combines in-person training sessions with a struc-tured follow-up stretching in time after the session. The main challenge forglobal companies when it comes to diversity training is to generate behavioralchange for thousands of employees at a reasonable cost. The recent progress

in mind sciences provides a new opportunity to address such a challenge byintegrating implicit bias awareness tools in large group sessions.

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Leveraging high level research on how the mind operates, we have

designed an online, self-paced, seven to eight-week5 comprehensive

training program: the Diverseo Implicit Bias Reduction Program.

The programs objective is to build awareness of implicit biases and then en-courage training participants to apply specific techniques to help them reducethe impact of implicit biases on their behaviour and decision-making.

Over the seven to eight weeks, various activities are suggested to participants.Some of the activities are very short (e.g. taking a customized IAT, thinking ofa counter-stereotypical individual). Others can take longer and consist inpracticing new behaviours such as taking out for coffee (or having lunch with)a colleague about whom they might wish to engage in a more inclusive behavior.In total, over the duration of the program, the time investment in onlineactivities is relatively small (60-90 minutes); participants can (and often do)decide to undertake further diversity enhancing activities beyond the programif they wish.

Recent research confirms that the activities included in the Implicit Bias

Reduction Program are effective to reduce the negative impact of auto-matic behaviors and decisions and change attitudes.

The impact of our approach has been measured. To our knowledge, it is one ofthe most effective approaches to transform behaviors and decision making.It ensures improved managerial and collaborative skills and enhances teammanagement and performance over time with online tools.

The tools used in our training session instigated behavioral change for 80% ofour training participants as they learn techniques to better leverage diversityand reduce the negative impacts of implicit biases. For example, investment

banking Managing Directors who have attended our training have increasedthe percentage of women recruited at Harvard from 10% to 50%, all else be-ing equal.

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Client insights

A global industrial player has decided to generate awareness ofimplicit biases and provide its workforce with practical strategiesto reduce their impact on a daily basis. The program was initiated bya session with 120 global HR directors, followed by a well-preparedworkshop with the Executive Committee. This workshop enabled

to identify the need for more inclusive leadership, starting withglobalized sales and R&D teams, and for improving the odds ofpromotions for women and international experts and managers. A globaltraining program roll-out was designed.

For each of the 9 global Regions, a 3-hour executive committeeworkshop was prepared to instigate behavioral change within thelocal executive team and adapt the global strategy to the local con-text. This session was then followed by a one-day training schemefor each country: in the morning, a 3-hour session for the top team;in the afternoon, a town-hall meeting comprising up to 700 peoplewith customized Group Implicit Association Tests. After attendingthe in-person training sessions, all participants had access to theImplicit Bias Reduction Program to sustain implicit bias awarenessand practice more inclusive behaviors on a daily basis.

This scheme allowed the company to train 45,000 employees in lessthan 6 months, generating significant momentum for change.

Set the right KPIs.

Measuring progress is important as one should expect what one in-spects. But the choice of indicators is important.

Women participation at the top should be the result of actions. Measuringdemographics as a target makes little sense, as it is not directly actionable.It often leads to unwanted results: to reach the often recommended 30%target, senior executives tend to grab the low-hanging fruit: communication,HR and legal thus tend to be led by women while line management functionsremain all-male. Worse, setting gender-related targets can reinforce ste-reotypes and further reduce womens legitimacy when reaching leadershiproles. It is therefore much preferable to set action-related targets such as theparticipation in training sessions or the pace of implementation of objective

decision-making processes. Women representation at the top still needs tobe tracked as a result, in order to check the effectiveness of the transforma-tion program, rather than as an end in itself.

Each company should develop the right action plan to improve the efficiencyof talent management, with relevant targets and KPIs. Dashboards involvingtop executives across businesses and regions are often appropriate tools tofoster change.

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Effective change for diversity:

from vision to reality

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Diverseo is the preeminent consultancy leveraging the latest advances incognitive sciences to help global firms enhance quality of decision-makingand capitalize on all talents. We generate impactful change in organizationstructure and individual behaviors for performance. Our clients have ob-tained significant results in increasing diversity. We are the exclusive part-ner of Project Implicit researchers (Harvard, University of Washingtonand University of Virginia) who invented the Implicit Associations Test.

Nathalie MaligeCEO

Nathalie focuses on counseling senior executives, often CEOs of Fortune500 companies, to leverage a wider range of talents and markets by com-bining expertise on unconscious bias, strategy and diversity management.Many of the projects she leads contribute improving quality of decisionmaking by reducing the impact of cognitive bias to increase financial per-formance. A sought-after speaker, she delivers conferences and executivecommittees seminars across the globe. A graduate of the AmericanUniversity of Beirut and ESCP-Europe, she held international roles inmarketing and strategy consulting at P&G, Diageo and McKinsey prior to

founding Diverseo.Hugo CatherineDirectorHugo is in charge of business development, client delivery and teammanagement, with a strong focus on Asia. He leads world-wide projects instrategy and human resources, leveraging his cross-cultural experience.He previously managed HR transformation initiatives at Credit Agricole(addressing governance, organization & talent issues) and consulting pro-

jects at Oliver Wyman (Paris, New York). Hugo holds degrees in manage-ment (HEC) and international law (Panthon Assas).

Maxime LegendreSenior Talent Analytics ExpertMaxime is a quantitative expert in charge of data analysis. Combining hisknowledge of fundamental and applied sciences, he manipulates complexstatistical environments providing clients with highly effective insightsdirectly impacting diversity. At the interface of economic and cognitivefields, he designs innovative and business efficient IT solutions, with afocus on mind mapping. Maxime graduated from Ecole Polytechnique andholds a Master in innovation design & management.

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