President Joe Biden’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris noticed Google searches for glass cliff triple, and conversations round this loaded time period are back in the headlines. However with Harris now leading in the polls, the vibe could also be altering.
For a lot of ladies, the information was first met with unease and suspicion. Her appointment bore the logos of the glass cliff phenomenon, the place ladies are promoted to leadership positions during times of organizational crisis, rising their danger of failure. Ladies have good cause to be cautious of those eventualities: Research present that in going through glass cliffs ladies are sometimes knowingly set as much as fail, perpetuating perceptions about feminine leaders’ limitations.
However as Harris’s nomination revives conversations round glass cliffs, many feminine leaders at the moment are seizing on the second to method these discussions from multiple angle. Whereas the discourse usually revolves across the systemic biases pushing ladies into high-risk conditions, they’re reminding us that girls additionally steadily ascend to those posts by their distinctive, hard-won capabilities—and that inside no-win conditions it’s the ladies who usually do win.
To have profitable careers, ladies, particularly ladies of coloration, should embrace high-risk profession paths from day one, welcoming precarious conditions the place their gender makes them hypervisible and topic to higher scrutiny. By means of adversity, they sharpen expertise essential to navigating crises, together with distinctive resilience, strategic considering, and robust interpersonal expertise. Removed from being passively conned into accepting management roles, ladies know the danger tax they’re paying and their appointors know full properly their singular capability to pay it and succeed.
On this fraught second, it’s paramount to think about classes from the numerous ladies capably striding alongside the sting of glass cliffs: how they’re usually profitable and, within the course of, actively rewriting the foundations for the way future ladies leaders will ascend to management positions.
Doomed to thrive
It’s essential to have the ability to determine and assess a glass cliff, in addition to to know the way to keep away from falling. It’s additionally essential to comprehend that strolling into this situation is commonly not in your greatest curiosity.
Nevertheless it’s equally essential to acknowledge that girls’s continuous wrestle towards higher equality has steadily left them with out the choice of avoiding high-risk eventualities. And, on the identical time, we should be taught from those that take the job, flip the script, and pave the trail ahead.
Ladies have transformed cliffs to runways as a result of they’re uniquely succesful leaders in instances of disaster. Anecdotal proof, knowledge, and real-world examples again this up. Evaluating pre- and post-pandemic research, for instance, research from Harvard Business Review concludes that girls are higher leaders during times of turmoil.
Their effectiveness is because of a specialised talent set honed from frequently going through unfair expectations and extra scrutiny.
The primary of those particular attributes is resilience. It’s the bedrock upon which different strengths are constructed. Past the inherited difficulties of a disaster, ladies on the glass cliff usually face disproportionate scrutiny and doubt. For ladies and different underrepresented occupational teams, research indicates that failure and even lack of enchancment tends to be attributed to non-public failings quite than the scenario.
Taking the reins in turbulent instances requires immense resilience. Confronted by overwhelming challenges, leaders in these positions are sometimes remoted, bearing the brunt of criticism for points past their management. As they endure these pressures, they need to keep a singular deal with actionable options and a readiness to adapt.
Lamentably, ladies, notably ladies of coloration, are well-accustomed to soldiering on within the face of formidable boundaries. By means of a historical past of systemic obstacles and underrepresentation, ladies leaders grow to be keenly adept at overcoming the chances and shouldering accountability, whereas conserving a constructive outlook and readiness to adapt. Not surprisingly, research finds that women are considered by their peers to be considerably extra expert at taking initiative, championing change, and agile studying throughout moments of disaster.
Mary Barra, CEO of Common Motors, is an instance of this resilience. Assuming the function after a chapter and an enormous ignition change recall, Barra was thrust into the worldwide highlight as the primary feminine CEO of a serious automaker. Although critics always considered her choices by means of the lens of gender, Barra deftly dealt with a public relations nightmare, applied key strategic adjustments, and personally embodied a culture of accountability.
Steering GM to record-breaking income, Barra’s resilience upended stereotypes and presents different ladies helpful classes for what it means to boldly tread the glass cliff. Barra realized to embrace quite than downplay her identification as a feminine chief, reminding us that when ladies succeed the place others can’t, their hypervisibility turns into a possibility to encourage. Alongside a glass cliff, ladies should draw on a deep reservoir of distinctive expertise and know that future ladies leaders are ready and watching.
Each smooth and onerous expertise
In a typically much less flattering manner, assumptions about ladies’s “female contact” and “instinct” for fixing issues are additionally utilized in typical explanations for why ladies ascend glass cliffs. What’s extra empowering, nonetheless, is the truth that quite a few research additionally present that girls in high-risk conditions assert strengths in strategic and analytic considering extra successfully than males. Whereas a lot is made of ladies’s smooth expertise, studies by neuroscientists conclude that when the strain is on ladies usually tend to make data-driven, sure-bet choices. Extra particularly, they rating greater in classes measuring capacities for making choices, driving outcomes, establishing stretch objectives, fixing issues, and analyzing points, in keeping with studies by Harvard Business Review.
Throughout difficult instances, leaders should assess complicated conditions, understand the interconnectedness of a number of components, and develop efficient motion plans with restricted assets. Having navigated marginalized identities, ladies (notably of coloration) develop a eager understanding of complicated social dynamics, that are essential expertise for analytical decision-making. Consistently revalidating their competence sharpens their problem-solving expertise, whereas frequent exclusion from casual networks and career-enhancing alternatives can endow ladies with distinctive resourcefulness.
Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, Iceland’s first feminine prime minister (from 2009 to 2013), entered workplace simply after Iceland’s banking system collapsed. Its foreign money was dramatically devalued, unemployment had skyrocketed, protests erupted, and the nation confronted chapter. A particularly succesful essential thinker, Sigurðardóttir walked the glass cliff, working with the Worldwide Financial Fund to repair the financial system, stabilize the trade fee, and restructure the banking sector. Her authorities shrewdly maneuvered to scale back the finances deficit whereas additionally ensuring to guard important public companies.
Credited with saving Iceland’s financial system, Sigurðardóttir’s glass cliff grew to become a runway. She challenged stereotypes about ladies as primarily intuitive quite than analytical leaders and paved the trail ahead with initiatives comparable to gender budgeting and reaching a gender-balanced Cupboard. Her instance reminds ladies to say their capacities for strategic considering in turbulent moments. In doing so, they make a robust enterprise case for gender equality and may redefine organizational tradition.
Cliffside communication
Anne Mulcahy was appointed Xerox CEO in August 2001, with the corporate on the sting of chapter. On the day she took her place, Xerox’s inventory dropped by 15%. One month later, the 9/11 assaults triggered a world financial downturn.
As one of many few feminine CEOs of a serious company, Mulcahy confronted extra skepticism and strain to take Xerox into Chapter 11. But when her appointers had been prepared to let Mulcahy take the autumn, they had been additionally probably conscious of her 25-year monitor report at Xerox for driving outcomes by means of a people-centric method that impressed and motivated her groups.
Mulcahy resisted strain. She drew on a singular knack for efficient communication and a capability to combine empathetic management with a agency hand. Mulcahy prioritized offering emotional assist and two-way communication for workers reeling from the 9/11 tragedy and the pressure of potential monetary collapse. On the identical time, she was honest and firm, telling them that they need to both “roll up their sleeves and go to work or depart Xerox.”
The various social dynamics and office challenges that girls are compelled to maneuver all through their careers additional strengthen a stage of emotional intelligence that analysis signifies is steadily distinct to ladies. Research present that during times of crisis female leaders are simpler at inspiring and motivating, creating crew members, and constructing relationships. When workers’ engagement ranges are measured throughout tumultuous intervals, these working for feminine leaders are considerably greater.
Mulcahy engineered an astounding turnaround that propelled Xerox again right into a market chief place. She, too, offered a blueprint for different daring ladies leaders through the use of her function and affect throughout a disaster to champion variety and inclusivity initiatives, firmly establishing Xerox as an business chief in these essential areas.
Whereas Mulcahy offers us yet one more story of how feminine leaders are uniquely geared up to win in no-win conditions, her case additionally gives an particularly highly effective instance for in the present day’s historic second and what it means when ladies flip the tables. Mulcahy gained and cast a path ahead together with her boldness, competence, and dedication to future generations.
Mulcahy handed the reins to Ursula Burns, whom she had mentored, making Burns the primary African American lady to steer an S&P 500 firm. Burns additionally efficiently led by means of disaster, guiding Xerox by means of the decline of its conventional printing enterprise and diversifying its mannequin into companies.
There can be rather more discuss of glass cliffs within the subsequent few months. Amongst feminine leaders, the message can be clear: We can not and don’t acquiesce to glass cliffs. However our capability for turning high-risk precipices into springboards can train the world lots.
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