Inclusive Talent Management: How Business Can Thrive in an Age of Diversity with Stephen Frost

Many organizations believe that they are truly meritocratic. This belief can make C-suite executives react defensively when faced with evidence of bias. How can diversity and inclusion advocates best communicate to such an audience in ways that leverage existing research and, most importantly, in ways that will be accepted and incorporated by those in leadership roles? This week’s WAPPP seminar featured Stephen Frost, Founder and Principal at Frost Included and WAPPP AY14 Fellow, whose latest book, Inclusive Talent Management: How Business Can Thrive in the Age of Diversity, demonstrates how to align talent management and diversity and inclusion agendas.

Steve began with a video that encapsulates the notion that “it’s easy to miss something you’re not looking for.”

When viewers are concentrating on counting the number of passes one team makes, it’s easy to miss the moonwalking bear! A similar logic applies to talent management concerns – when managers protest that they “can’t find qualified women” for a leadership role, it behooves us to ask how we can restructure talent management processes with an eye toward diversity and inclusion to make sure that such qualified candidates – who certainly exist! – are properly identified and given due consideration.

One reason it’s so easy to “not look for” diverse candidates is because we anchor on our in-groups. Think of your five closest friends, your five closest colleagues, your partner(s), and where you live.  How diverse is this group? Often, our in-groups are very similar to ourselves. Our in-groups also serve as our anchors for perceiving traits like intelligence and trustworthiness in others. Without a diverse in-group that would counteract this implicit bias, we create schema of what a “leader” looks like, for example, based on the people we know who are similar to us. This bias can also manifest in corporate decisions, so that we tend to hire, retain, and promote people like ourselves.

The challenge, Steve says, is that in an age of diversity, we are still addicted to likeness. The resolution is how to change the system and our own behaviors. The key to creating change is to employ both unconscious nudges – changing the way we structure our environment to incentivize less-biased decisions – as well as conscious leadership efforts.

Steve and his colleagues interviewed 66 organizations, asking whether they believed themselves to be meritocracies and asking about their talent management in terms of recruitment, retention, and promotion. The current state is homogenous talent management, infused with large amounts of bias at each stage. However, Steve also found three models of diversity and inclusion programs. Diversity 101 is “diversity for diversity’s sake,” characterized by a compliance-based approach – “we do it because we have to.” Diversity 2.0 is “diversity for social responsibility,” which makes a marketing approach to diversity designed to draw out the benefits of difference. Diversity 3.0, by contrast, treats diversity as a boardroom-level issue and employs a bottom-up, integrated approach to systems designed to embed the benefits of difference.

One such example, as Steve described, was a decision to interview candidates in groups of ten in order to save time and money. In these larger settings, interviewers tended to see skill sets as more salient, rather than identity, and were primed to think about team dynamics rather than the individual. In these group interview settings, recruiters hired more diverse candidates. This change was to save resources, not because of the research on nudges toward diversity and inclusion, but had the effect of creating a more diverse work environment.

Steve also discussed an intervention in talent management specifically related to gender at KPMG. The organization’s talent management approach involved all of the (predominantly straight white male) partners gathering in one room, talking about who they want to promote to the partnership, putting candidates on table, and agreeing on 10-20. Unsurprisingly, given what we know about in-groups and unconscious bias, the candidates up for promotion tended to look like the existing partners. The question is how to make this group less biased and more meritocratic without making them defensive.

The simple intervention that Steve proposed was to whiteboard the pipeline of potential incoming partners, separating the pool that were considered ready for partnership from those who were one to two years out, but to write the names of male candidates in red and female candidates in green. As soon as the names were written out, the discrepancy was clear – women were considered one to two years out for consideration for partnership, while men were disproportionately considered ready for promotion. On top of this, Steve attached a quantitative measure of performance for each name. Then, it became clear that several names in the “ready for partnership” group, predominantly men, were less well-performing than women in the “one to two years out” group. This intervention employs simple strategies to engender a rational, rigorous, calm, and systematic approach to checking in-group bias in talent management.

One practical challenge with diversity and inclusion interventions is that everyone is stressed and has little time and attention, to say nothing of resources, to put toward this critical work. Fortunately, even simple interventions can decrease unconscious bias, and when paired with conscious leadership efforts, these interventions can be very powerful. The simplest approach is simply to ask people to remember to ask “WADI”: What About Diversity and Inclusion.

Consequences of Value Threat: The Influence of Helping Women on Female Solos’ Preference for Female Candidates with Michelle Duguid

At this week’s WAPPP seminar, we were delighted to host Michelle Duguid, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Professor Duguid is a key scholar of power and status-linked social identities in organizations. The impetus for her research agenda began with a project on the social, profession, and philanthropic networks of board of directors. Looking through years and years of proxy statements, she noticed that boards were initially homogeneous and gradually added a few members with some demographic diversity. Once these additions had been made, further diversity stagnated. These observations led to broader questions: how do high-status groups diversify, and what factors dampen further diversification?

As we know, female representation at the highest levels hasn't kept pace with representation at lower levels. What explains this discrepancy? Are men consciously excluding women? Or is implicit bias to blame? One solution t this problem has been to deliberately place a few qualified women at the top to act as “diversification catalysts” – these women are supposed to counter stereotypes about women in the workforce, serve as role models, and advocate for women in the hiring process. If this approach is working, Professor Duguid says, it's at a glacial pace.

It may be that female solos – the sole women in working groups -- actually discriminate against female candidates. In her previous research, Professor Duguid and her collaborators identified value threat as the mechanism underlying female solos’ decisions to select or not select female candidates. Value threat is concern about not being seen as valued member of the work group, which individuals are keen to avoid. When female solos are faced with a female candidate with superior qualifications, they tend to experience value threat. Female solos may feel that their reputation and social standing is under threat, assuming that the group will view this woman as more valuable. Despite this value threat, women who actively exclude other women are not seen in a positive light – they’re derided as insecure, selfish “queen bees” or “mean girls.”

Organizations may look to women who have helped other women in the past to help diversify their organization, under the assumption that if they have helped women in the past, they’ll be less likely to discriminate in the future. However, it’s possible that those who have helped women feel licensed to not select a female candidate over an equally qualified man. If a female solo has helped women in the past, she doesn’t have to worry about the negative identity implications of being a “mean girl” – she can discriminate with impunity. This moral licensing is common in other areas – pro-social behavior in one realm can permit questionable acts in another (individuals who purchase “green” products are less likely to give to charity, for example).

Group context is significant to whether (and how much) individuals experience value threat. In particular, Professor Duguid has found that group status is correlated with value threat. If female solos are evaluating female candidates to join their high-status group, they are much more likely to discriminate. In a high-status group, female solos selected female candidates 30% of the time, compared to 76% for female solos in low-status groups. In low-status groups, individuals are less likely to get the self-image boost or tangible benefits that would come from belonging to a higher status group, and therefore care less about what other group members think. With decreased value threat comes decreased discrimination!

With these findings in hand, Professor Duguid set out to test two main questions: 1) Are female solos in high-status groups who have previously volunteered to help women licensed to discriminate against female candidates? 2) To what extent can context reduce value threat, and are women who experience less value threat less likely to feel licensed to discriminate?

Study 1

The first study was designed to examine the effects of gender and helping on value threat and candidate preference. Professor Duguid set up a “high-status group,” enlisting the help of the Dean. Study participants were told that they would be a part of the Dean’s focus group on the success of the school’s admissions process in screening for high-quality candidates. In order to qualify for the focus group, they had to score well on a test. Half the group was told that they could volunteer to help a same-sex candidate who would be working on a similar study by providing strategies for the test. The other half, the control group, was not given an option to help. After taking the test, participants were given the names of the other members of their “group,” three participants of the opposite sex. They were then told that they could select who the next group member would be and were given a man and a woman’s name. When female participants volunteered to help, they chose female candidates significantly less than in the no-option condition. Male participants overwhelmingly chose male candidates in both conditions. Female participants reported far more value threat than male participants, which mediated the relationship between gender and candidate choice.

Study 2

The second study was meant to examine effect of numerical status and helping on individuals’ experience of value threat. In this study, female participants could volunteer to help other women, be assigned to help women, or not be given an option to help. Consistent with the first study, female participants who volunteered to help were far less likely to select female candidates than those in the no-option condition. However, female participants who were assigned to help selected female candidates more than those who volunteered to help. This finding lends credence to the idea that volunteering to help creates a moral licensing effect that permits later discrimination. This study also demonstrated the difference between female solos and female majorities. Female majorities identified far less value threat than female solos, which mediates the relationship between numeric representation and candidate choice.

Study 3

In the third study, Professor Duguid looked at deliberate helping. Would female solos be motivated to volunteer to help other women in order to later discriminate against female candidate without suffering the negative attributions associated with this behavior? Female participants were asked to pick a candidate in one of three conditions: 1) the female candidate was slightly more qualified than the male (female solos should be strategically motivated to help female candidates in order to license future discrimination); 2) the male candidate was slightly more qualified than the female candidate (we would not expect female solos to be motivated to help women – they could select the male candidate based on merit without fear of seeming discriminatory); 3) the female candidate was overwhelmingly more qualified than the male (female solos would not be motivated to help these candidates to license future discrimination – it would be very strange for them to not select the overwhelmingly qualified candidate). True to the researchers’ predictions, female solos were much more likely to help in the first scenario.

Study 4

The final study was designed to test whether reducing female solos’ experience of value threat would influence their perceptions of helping other women as a licensing opportunity. If female solos felt more valued, the logic goes, they would be less likely to discriminate. In this study, before selecting a candidate, one group of female solos was asked to list five reasons numeric minorities “would be concerned about not being seen as a valued member of the group.” The second group was asked to list five reasons numeric minorities “would be seen as valued members of the group.” The third group, the control, was asked to list five things about their previous day. In the first condition, female solos were significantly less likely to choose female candidates. However, in the second condition, female solos chose the female candidate approximately 73% of the time. When female solos feel valued, they are far more comfortable bringing another woman into the group.

These findings offer an answer to the question of why diversification at high levels has been so slow. If women don’t feel valued, it would be unrealistic for them to pull someone in who could be competition. However, understanding value threat means that organizations can take positive steps to increase representation and diversity. Professor Duguid recommends substantially increasing the diversity of decision-makers and increasing inclusion to ensure that people feel valued, not just representative of a group.

Lean Back: How do we stop working too much?

“He’s a very good employee; he works late every day.”

How many times have you heard someone say something like this, implying that the amount of time someone works is indicative of the quality of their work?

In this week’s seminar on “Imposed vs. Desired Professional Identities: Embracing, Passing, Revealing and their Consequences,” Professor Erin Reid of Boston University looked at whether this idea is true, and how workers at a competitive management consulting firm feel about it.

Professor Reid starts with the idea that the most desirable worker, according to this organization, is one that is always available for and committed to their work---a profile that is assumed to describe men more than women, who supposedly prioritize home life more. And in fact, large firms often assess their personnel based not on the quality of their output, but on the time they put in and their attitude towards doing so; the idea of “billable hours” practically imposes this on an organization.

She finds, however, that even in this competitive, demanding organization, more than 57% of the workers feel a conflict with this norm: they don’t want the time commitment to harm their family lives, they don’t want their health to suffer, and fundamentally, they don’t think putting in more hours necessary means better work or a better life.

But the way they deal with this conflict differs. Those that openly reveal their preferences for normal working hours by asking for leave or telling colleagues about their non-office priorities, were often penalized by the firm: passed over for promotions or outright fired. But others simply passed off their preferences by making others think that they were working longer than they were, or that they were committed to office work mentally even while prioritizing non-office activities. These people were often rewarded by their colleagues and by management.

In the short term, this would indicate that to get the best of both worlds, employees should just pretend to be committed to 18-hour days while actually finding ways around it---ducking out early, making arrangements to work from home, being strategic about who in the office they tell and how.

But more consequentially, this conflict speaks to an American tendency to think that “more time at work” equals “better work,” which is not necessarily true---in fact it’s often the opposite. Not only do work-life balance and social relations suffer, but the quality of work itself suffers when people are overworked and exhausted. And contrary to common perceptions, women and men are realizing this at equal rates.

While the gender equality discourse has recently been dominated by Sheryl Sandberg’s exhortation to “Lean In”---i.e. to work as hard as you must to get a place at the table---Rosa Brooks writes that “We've managed to create a world in which ubiquity” in the office and the home “is valued above all.” This is an untenable recipe for disaster.

Instead, women “need to fight for our right to lean out...If we're going to fight the culture of workplace ubiquity, and the parallel and equally pernicious culture of intensive parenting, we need to do it together---and we need to bring [men] along, too. They need to lean out in solidarity, for their own sake as well as ours.”



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Diversity and Inclusion at the London Olympics (new book)

New book by WAPPP fellow, Stephen Frost:

The Inclusion Imperative is the untold story of the inclusion programmes behind the scenes at the world's greatest event, the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It presents a radically different method for organisations to implement successful 'Diversity and Inclusion' and help themselves, their people and the wider world.


As Head of Diversity & Inclusion at the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Ltd., Stephen Frost was responsible for incorporating diversity and inclusion across the 200,000 workforce, volunteers and contractors, as well as in the $2 billion procurement programme and all aspects of service delivery. At WAPPP, Stephen’s research will focus on diversity and inclusiveness during the planning of the London Games which are regarded as one of the best ever. Stephen graduated from Oxford and Harvard and has a background in advertising and consulting. He is a Fulbright Scholar, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum. He established the workplace team at Stonewall and led membership of their flagship Diversity Champions program for employers to over 300 members ranging from JPMorgan to the Royal Navy and Manchester City Football Club. He also developed the Workplace Equality Index, the UK's first LGBT leadership program in conjunction with Henley Management college and a diversity recruitment guide distributed to every higher educational institution in the country.