Why Care? #23: Kristen Anderson - Meritocracy or Mirrortocracy?
“When you start defining diversity in a broader sense, usually you will find a lot of people who are passionate about one element. Maybe they have experienced exclusion because they are a certain age, or have a certain number of years at the company, and they don’t feel like they’re taken seriously or listened too. Getting people engaged in one element is important, and that’s where the wave starts coming and the train leaves the station and can’t go back.”
In Episode 23 I am joined by Kristen Anderson, Vice Chair of European Women on Boards, to discuss the myth of meritocracy, how organisations can start their DEI journey, and how to gather buy-in from employees who may not immediately understand the need for DEI.
Kristen’s background is in Chemical Engineering, spending a lot of her career in the technical side of the food industry, working all over the world for big companies such as Kraft and Coca Cola, leaving her native USA to work in Australia, Germany, and China before settling in Italy. Working for Barilla in Italy, Kristen started her official DEI journey, joining their maiden DEI Board before eventually becoming their Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer.
We start our conversation with Kristen offering career advice on how to join the DEI field and make progress. She then offers advice for any organisation on how to start their DEI journey, emphasising to walk before they run. This includes advice on how to get that sought after buy-in from employees who may show hesitance towards DEI initially, by making it clear how inclusion is relevant and beneficial to everyone. Getting people interested in one element of inclusion, whether age, gender or race etc., is the first step to getting them to have a broader understanding.
Since her role at Barilla, Kristen has retired from the food industry and is now the Vice Chair of European Women on Boards – a non-profit focusing on gender diversity in decision making in Europe. We talk about the crucial work that EWoB does, including how they work with men as allies and believe including everyone is key to improving gender diversity.
Meritocracy is a concept Kristen and I both come across regularly in our work. We discuss the ‘myth of meritocracy’ and Kristen shares her idea of ‘mirrortocracy’ instead, how people reflect their biases and social bubbles instead of purely basing decisions solely in merit. Bias isn’t just something external though, Kristen shares her experiences of the female leaders she works with having internal biases against themselves where they often don’t realise their full capabilities.
We close the episode by discussing what organisations can do to increase their gender diversity and support female leaders, including the support EWoB provides leaders and organisations.
Links
Kristen can be found on Linkedin as: Kristen Anderson
More from European Women on Boards can be found at their website at: https://europeanwomenonboards.eu/
The EWOB 2021 Gender Diversity Index Report can be found at: https://europeanwomenonboards.eu/portfolio/gender-diversity-index-2021/
More on Barilla can be found on their website at: https://www.barilla.com/
To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.
Transcript
Kristen Anderson 0:00
There's the effect of what I call mirrortocracy instead of meritocracy. A lot of people say I don't believe in quotas because I believe in meritocracy, meaning, I just believe that we should promote or bring on board, just the most qualified people. And people say, ‘that's why I don't believe in this’, but let's be very clear, meritocracy is a wonderful theory, it is not reality, because that means we have no biases. If I can evaluate every single candidate without any biases coming into my evaluation, I'm a meritocracy, but we're not robots and we do have biases. We tend to have this affinity bias meritocracy; I want to bring Nadia on because she reminds me of myself, she is younger than me and I think she could do great on the board, and I don't realise I have this bias, so I'm not looking at Luca who is actually a more qualified candidate.
Nadia Nagamootoo 0:47
Hi, my name is Nadia Nagamootoo, Business psychologist, coach, speaker and founder of Avenir consulting, which creates organisational growth and success by inclusion and diversity. We've been discussing the benefits that diversity brings to a company's bottom line performance for decades with more and more evidence, but there are so many questions organisations still have about how to achieve it. How do you create a culture where people feel valued for their uniqueness and the qualities they bring? I believe it's crucial to the future success and sustainability of every organisation that they find the answer to this question to make sure that each employee is not only supported but also appreciated. With this podcast, I aim to get some of the key challenges to creating inclusive workplaces out in the open and start uncovering the solutions to embracing a culture that cares for everyone. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most inspiring people in different countries and across industries who are pushing the boundaries on inclusion and diversity in the workplace, from topics such as parenting in the workplace, ethnicity, age, gender, mental health, and all things inclusion. I want to create a movement to change society through sharing life experiences and creating more empathy and connection. Why care? I believe that once we have organisations and societies that accept and value everyone for who they are, we become healthier, happier and better in our roles both inside and outside work.
Hello, and welcome to episode 23 of the Why Care Podcast. My name is Nadia Nagamootoo and I am your host. In this episode, I speak to the inspiring Kristen Anderson, Vice Chair of European Women on Boards. Kristen is a qualified chemical engineer and has spent most of her career in STEM-related R&D roles, living in different regions of the world working for big corporates such as Kraft, Coca Cola and Barilla. Her final role before retiring from Barilla was their Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, leading a series of programmes and initiatives that achieved whole organisation momentum for DEI. Kristen talks about the power of employee resource groups and offers advice on how to engage staff so that these networks are employee-led, she also explains how to gain buy-in and allyship for majority group members. Kristen discusses the important work European Women on Boards are doing to overcome the deep systemic gender biases, and support organisations to achieve the new EU directive for all organisations to have 40% women at board-level. This episode is packed with advice. Enjoy. Kristen, lovely to have you on the show and I'm so excited to speak to you. I know we've only had one previous conversation, but just from that conversation, I know we're going to have a really cool chat today.
Kristen Anderson 3:31
Thank you for inviting me, Nadia, we really connected the last time we talked. And then thank you for the invitation to join you today to talk about topics that are very near and dear to me
Nadia Nagamootoo 3:41
As women in particular, I know that with your role with the European Women on Boards, we are going to have a really cool conversation around where we're at when it comes to gender parity, gender equity. But before we do all of that, I just want to get a sense of this amazing career path that you've been on, because I feel it's really worth sharing your career today, and also how you ended up in diversity, equity and inclusion, because everyone's got a story when it comes to their path, and I'd really love to hear yours.
Kristen Anderson 4:11
Definitely, I think as you said, everyone's got a different career path, and mine was pretty atypical because I'm a chemical engineer by training, and so when I graduated with my master's degree, the audience could tell from my accent that I’m American. I'm living here in Italy, in Parma, because the last company I worked for is Barilla, an Italian food company based here in Parma. So, that's how I ended up in this beautiful location, but as I graduated and decided what industry I wanted to go into, I really liked the food industry. And so, I moved to the food industry because I liked the idea of being able to eat what you produce, and then there's always the consumer part and a lot of fun. I worked in the US for many years, then I worked in Australia for three years running R&D for the big multinational, Kraft, and also then in Munich for five years. And then if you follow the food industry, there was some mergers and acquisitions, and they wanted the people to come back to the US, and I had decided many years ago not to go back to work in the US. I liked the overseas experience, and so I went to China and worked for Coca-Cola in Shanghai for three years.
And then a recruiter told me to come to Parma to run part of the research group for Barilla, so, I relocated to Parma. So that's the chemical engineering STEM part of my experience. Then, Barilla started working more on diversity and inclusion in the company, with a very strong effort sponsored by Chairman Guido Barilla, and by the CEO, Claudio Colzani. They had formed a D&I board with internal members of the company, and I was asked to be on the board, probably because I’ve lived in a few places around the world. After some years, I left R&D, I was asked by the CEO to take over as Chief Diversity and Inclusion officer, so, I did that role for the last five years of my career. So that's how I fell into DEI, but I think again, there's no traditional career path for D&I, and I think everyone that works in it has a passion for more inclusion and more diversity in the organisations. And one year ago, I retired from Barilla and moved to European Women on Boards, which is a non-profit, Brussels-based but Pan European, their sole objective was to get more women in decision making positions around Europe. So, I'm the Vice Chair of European Women on Boards now, which is a fantastic organisation. And I left Barilla because the Chief Diversity Officer role is rotating, and it was time for me to pass the baton to someone else, which I think is smart, because it means you have new eyes, and after five years, it was time for someone else to be in the role. And so, I wanted to continue in the DEI space and that's how I'm now with the European Women on Boards.
Nadia Nagamootoo 6:38
What a story. I mean, what I love about that is it does show that anyone can work in this space, as long as you have the passion, the energy, the desire to make a difference in the diversity, equity and inclusion space. Because I think there are a lot of people out there who have started down a career path which might be completely different, not even within HR or the space of working with people, and then wanting to move into diversity, equity and inclusion. I met quite a few people actually, who just have a real passion for this, and they want to do more. What was it about you that they noticed at Barilla and said, actually, Kristen would be great for this DEI role?
Kristen Anderson 7:16
Bringing our differences to work, and basically trying to challenge the status quo in whatever job you're doing. I mean, again, I wasn't working in D&I, I was running part of R&D, but I was very vocal that there are some things that we could do better, to try to influence people to look at things from a different perspective and to try to talk a little bit about cultural differences in food, for example. And you know, it's not going to happen immediately, because most companies have their traditional style, they have a culture that's been formed over the years, and they are bringing new people into that. They want new ideas, but sometimes it's not always going to be quick to make that change. If there's a role in an ERG, an employee resource group, that’s very successful in cultural change and opening up a culture for valuing differences, I would suggest being involved in those, to join one of them and to even lead some project on them.
If you are doing these things where you're working in the community, in your organisation, you'll be noticed if you have a passion for that. A lot of ERG leaders then take on roles of diversity officer or diversity manager. So, I think DEI is not an HR function, it's an everyone function, you don't need to be sitting in HR, and sometimes when you're not in HR, that's a great way to embed D&I in a business. So, I had the privilege of working directly for the CEO, it was designed in Barilla to be a function that we reported to the CEO. So, leadership commitment and viewing it as a business priority was not as difficult as when sometimes there's a perception that HR manages all DEI, which is not true, everyone should manage DEI and everyone should work on inclusion. So, get involved in some way, and if you have the passion, you'll be noticed. And I think that can also be great for your curriculum or your CV, you can say I was an ERG leader, those steps make a difference, you don't need to go from whatever you're doing to a Chief Diversity Officer. So, take other steps, if you don't have ERGs in your company, work with HR and say, we should form them, or you could volunteer to help underprivileged groups and underrepresented groups in your community, because that also goes on your CV as something you're passionate about, and it shows that you've made a difference in some way.
Nadia Nagamootoo 9:20
Yeah, thank you for that insight. In Barilla, the role that you then got in diversity, equity, and inclusion, that was the first of its kind, and the first role that Barilla offered anyone to work in the diversity, equity and inclusion space. So, is that right? There's no work to date that's been done actively with a proper person in place to work on diversity, equity and inclusion, where did you start?
Kristen Anderson 9:46
That's a good question. It seems like a big challenge when you're starting and when you haven't done work on DEI before. I mean, again, I have to give a lot of credit to the Chairman and the CEO for forming DEI, for reporting to the CEO and creating a Chief Diversity Officer role, and for creating a D&I board with external advisors. Now I wasn't the first Chief Diversity Officer, Talita Erickson did a fantastic job as the very first person forming the basis for the work, and then I took over, so we call it season two. So, season one was Talita, she’s a Brazilian American, and she led the first season, which was really forming the key steps, making the ground fertile for change, developing a DEI survey for all employees, doing training for everyone and basically talking about, what is DEI? You have to do the business case, so people understand what this initiative is. You need to explain that DEI is not something that's just about gender equality, or women, it's about valuing all differences, it is about really explaining the wider context. Then, I took over after three years, focusing on how to engage employees at all levels, how to continue our KPIs, because they developed KPIs in season one, because again, you only achieve what you measure. So, how do we continue that evolution of tracking and accountability but also engage employees and employee resource groups. So, that was a big initiative, starting from just a few employees of Barilla in America, 20 starting in 2015 to over 1500 employees and employee resource groups in Barilla around the world. So, it's an evolution, all these steps for change, it's not one thing that solves DEI, and there's not one step that makes cultural change, it's a journey, and you need to map it out, you need to get a lot of people involved, you need to make sure that you're tracking it, and that you are setting goals. Just like any other, if it's a business priority, and it should be managed like a business project.
Nadia Nagamootoo 11:31
Yeah. And so, at the time Barilla didn't have any employee resource networks or groups? Because this is something that a lot of organisations are asking me, where do we start? I think certain clients I've worked with; they've had the idea, they can see that an employee resource network or group would be valuable, but they've started it, and there wasn't enough momentum. So, what are the key factors that contribute to a successful employee resource group being set up, and being able to drive change?
Kristen Anderson 12:03
It’s a key point, because I've also been working with some companies asking, what were their best practices and again, sharing what worked and what didn't work, and that's the Barilla story. In general, what I see and what other companies say, is that it has to be a bottom-up grassroots type approach by employees, you cannot use a top-down approach and say, we should have affinity groups or employee networks. If you're starting work on DEI, it's not the first thing you do, you can’t say, ‘let's start working on DEI, okay, Nadia, form an employee resource group’, ‘first of all, Michael, what is DEI?’ or maybe I know what DEI is, but I don't understand why we're working on it in my company. ‘I'm a very diverse and inclusive person, but why does the company find it a priority?’ So, there needs to be some visible leadership commitment from the top. Luckily, in Barilla it wasn’t just the CEO and the Chairman, but it’s also other senior leaders saying, ‘we aren't inclusive enough, this is why we want to be more inclusive, because it's good for business’. There needs to be some time spent on that so that people get the context, that it’s not inclusive and diverse in the biggest and broadest sense of all differences, so people don't view this as just all about women, or it's all about people with different abilities.
Then, once you have that embedded, you should get employee feedback on areas to focus on, that's always a good thing, because everyone has a different opinion on what needs to be worked on for more inclusion, and getting even quick employee feedback on surveys really frames the basis of your strategy. So, spend some time on that, it doesn't mean it has to be five years, but spend some time on that, then start seeding the idea of these groups, basically educating employees around the world on what they are, and why they would be a benefit for your company. You need to set that foundation, and it's going to take different amounts of time. In some cultures, maybe it's more common to form groups of employees that make change, and in some cultures and some geographies, it's completely new. And so, you need to spend time telling employees why this is important, and they could potentially form it if they want, and they need to take the initiative, and that's where it will stick.
This is because if it becomes something that is a top down, people just say, okay, that's another business project. You also need to have the people that are passionate come out and say, ‘I'm putting my hand up, I want to form this group, I know what it is now, and I want to form it’. And then of course, you need to have your D&I committee or your Chief Diversity Officer to help and sponsor them, so they have a governance. They can't form this randomly, you need to have some way that they basically get approval, so that they have an action plan, a charter, and ultimately an executive sponsor. Another way the leaders in the organisation can show their commitment, is to be a sponsor of an ERG, and you'll see a lot of passion coming from leaders talking about why they're sponsoring this ERG. It could be that they're sponsoring an ERG of different generations because they feel that there is a barrier between knowledge sharing in the organisation. So, you can then find the right executive sponsors, and that helps to embed it because the executive sponsor has a lot of passion for their ERGs, and they will keep it going and then sponsor them.
Nadia Nagamootoo 14:57
Wow, there's a lot to do basically.
Kristen Anderson 15:01
I made it sound like that in two minutes, that you can do this quickly, but again, cultural change is anyone that works in this space, it's not a fast process, it takes steps. What's nice is that you will see as it goes forward, people coming along and being passionate and starting to lead this. To think that it is an easy thing to do, that everyone does training, and now we're much more inclusive, that doesn't happen. The training is important to make people understand that in some way, DEI is important to the company or the organisation. But after that, there are different steps that are beneficial, and they can be done in different ways, but some of them I think have been proven to be quite successful in cultural change.
Nadia Nagamootoo 15:39
So, what I love about what you just said, a number of times there, is that you said how important it is to explain to the whole organisation the why, like why are we all of a sudden talking about this? Why is it important? Why should they engage in this discussion? I think that there is that tendency, unless it's framed correctly, for it to seem like a tick box. So, there's the cynics in the organisation who think it is because of various movements, or it's the thing to do now. They are like, all right, now, we've appointed someone who's working on this, and now they want to set up employee resource groups. So, I've heard that in certain organisations and I think what I love about what you said was that it was so clear that the initiative has to follow a lot of work beforehand in setting the organisation up to be receptive and to be understanding of why this is important, not just for the organisation, but for them as employees too.
Kristen Anderson 16:34
Nadia, you’re right, because again, we do things that are right for the organisation, but also, it’s a big driver if you say it's right for you. If I can say Nadia, you will be a more inclusive leader, if you can do these things on inclusion and also take it to a personal level. I think to your point, you have to make the ground fertile for employee resource groups, you need to explain that diversity and inclusion is not just about gender diversity. I was talking to one company who said, ‘we’re really focusing on women and gender equality’, it's a good initiative, but if the organisation views DEI as just about women, the rest of the organisation will say, it has nothing to do with me. So, one of Barilla’s DEI board members said, ‘start off by defining DEI as all the aspects of diversity and explain that we're not going to be able to work on everything at the beginning, and that we're going to have to do them in steps.’ So, we're going to be focused on this step first, but we believe that diversity is different family situations, sexual orientation, generations, abilities, cultural backgrounds, religion, gender and work life balance. There was also a very good suggestion by the board that don't define gender balance as just gender in your ERGs, because then you will have basically ERGs of women. When you talk about a balance of gender and work-life, and you’ll get a lot of men; men want work-life balance as well, because you need to have men as allies to work in all these areas. If you define it broadly, but then say, our first initiatives will be this, then maybe people will understand that later on something else that they're passionate about will be a priority, and they can work on that. However, if you focus just on one aspect of diversity, the reaction you'll get mostly is that the people who are not in that diversity will feel like this is something that doesn't involve me at all.
Nadia Nagamootoo 18:22
Yeah, and it has the opposite impact of feeling excluded and that they don't belong and that they're not important. Since we've been really focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion, and particularly with gender, there is this backlash of men not feeling like there is anything in their organisation for them anymore.
Kristen Anderson 18:50
It’s definitely a common reaction that I see in other Chief Diversity Officers. To them, they have a group that they feel like they are not included in, saying, ‘this is not about me, where's my white Italian man, or white American women ERG?’. So that's just two things I would suggest, you know that you're making some steps forward when you get the reaction, because it's a common reaction, and if you don't get it, it means people aren't even paying attention to the message about DEI. So, you need to say that it's something I'm going to have to work through, but make sure again, as I've said numerous times, that you define and keep reinforcing that DEI is about everything. You’re maybe a white Italian man, you're from the south of Italy, and you aren't so included, so it’s about asking, have you ever been excluded? How did it feel? So, do these kinds of exercises, to get people to understand it's not just about women or different generations or people with disabilities, and then make sure that you define more broadly your ERGs, and define them as also the type of diversity plus allies. When Barilla formed ERGs, it wasn't that we said ‘Please, everyone with a disability tell us and we'll form an ERG around you’, that's not the way it works, it works because someone who's passionate about more inclusion of people with disability wants to form this ERG and maybe 100% of the people are allies.
So, focus on the role of the ally, or someone within ERG that’s from different groups, like the LGBTQ. People aren't going to say, ‘Yes, I'm a member of that community, I want to be part of the ERG’, it’s nondisclosure and you're an ally. The point is that you'll create a safe space where people can then be authentic and talk about their real self in work, and what their life is like, but it won't happen right away. As the ERG gets bigger, people feel more and more comfortable within that space to say, ‘Yes, I actually have a mental health issue’, or ‘I'm marrying my partner this weekend, I'm not going to go announce to the whole company, but in the ERG, I'm going to tell them after some time.’ So, that's how the disclosure happens, little by little people feel comfortable sharing because they're in a safe space with people that are allies and not asking for people to disclose anything, that's where a big role for the majority, or the group that feels not included, can be included. You can play a role as an ally; don't you think we have more inclusion of people of different generations?
When you start confining diversity in the broader sense, usually, we'll find a lot of people are passionate about one element, maybe they have experienced exclusion because they're a certain age or had a certain number of years at a company, and they don't feel like they're really taken seriously or listened to, but you could have an ERG about generations, and you have a lot of people involved. So, I think getting people engaged in one element is important, and that's where the wave starts coming, and as you say in America, ‘the train leaves the station and can't go back’, because you have so many people involved that even if some cynics say, I think this is just another one of those tick the box exercises, there are so many people involved in working on inclusion that it just can't stop. It's a wave that keeps going.
Nadia Nagamootoo 21:51
Yeah, I hear that, that momentum is needed, and you can create that by getting people to really connect with the work that's being done, because it's personal to them and it means something to them. So, is that the idea behind European Women on Boards, that you've created this safe space for women to come together who have a particular need, that isn't necessarily being met by their organisation or society more broadly? Could you explain a little bit more about the purpose of EWOB?
Kristen Anderson 22:24
So, European Women on Boards is specifically on gender, as you can tell from the name, it's European Women on Boards, but we have male ally members, and we want more. Because if you really believe that better decision-making will come with gender diversity, everyone should get involved. We're not exclusive to women, we have men, and we have individual memberships. So, what we do is, we provide training opportunities and networking opportunities for senior-level women and men, but we focus on the senior level. What's the point of difference of European Women on Boards, is that we're Pan-European, and I say, European in the broader sense. We have members from Turkey, we have members from the UK, it's not the European Union, we're a non-profit that is formed and we run ourselves with volunteers. So, if you want to join, you can join as an individual member, which gives you access to all of the webinars and peer networking. We're doing local chapters of EWOB, so, now people really want a face-to-face way to meet each other, and then we have our development programmes, the C-level programme. We are launching a board readiness programme, we are different because we're focused on senior women, we focus on a specific area, which is women that are close to C level, or actively looking for board positions. And yeah, again, we connect women across Europe with different functions, different backgrounds, and career aspirations, and give them the support and training to take on more board roles. And you saw that recently, European Union has now approved the board directive, we want to play a role as a talent pool for these senior women. Our goal is to have 1000 Women ready for C suite and board positions, so, to prevent the argument of I can't find those women, they're not there in certain functions, our role is to be able to provide that talent pool of women for those board positions in the future.
Nadia Nagamootoo 24:02
I think it's fantastic. And yes, the EU board directive, 40% is the directive, and 40% on a non-executive board, as well as executive, is that right?
Kristen Anderson 24:13
Yeah. And it's for publicly listed companies around Europe.
Nadia Nagamootoo 24:17
Yeah. I'm just trying to think, we're in the 30s, we are about 10% off achieving that now, roughly?
Kristen Anderson 24:24
Yeah. So, you take an average, of course, there's different progress in different countries, and different companies are doing well. I mean, if you take a look at the countries that have made progress, because as you know, this was proposed more than 10 years ago, and it passed some of the processes of getting approved, but then it was blocked by some member states, and it stayed basically blocked for 10 years. In the meantime, countries like France passed their own law, and made a regulation that made progress, because again, if you don't put a metric in place and you don't track it, it's like a business project. People say, ‘well, I don't believe in quotas’, this isn't a quota, this is a metric, you're not going to, for example, install a new multimillion-dollar line of pasta and not have anything that you're measuring. So, this is not about quotas, this is about making progress, and France made progress, because they put the line. As you said, some countries are almost at 40, at most or below, and some have made zero progress, because when you say it's going to be voluntary, how much voluntary work do we do at companies? You have a project, you track it, it's a priority, and you see if you're making progress. I think that's the same way we should approach the big challenge of diversity and gender diversity, it's a business initiative and look at it that way.
Nadia Nagamootoo 25:35
Yeah. So, what's the distinction, then, in your mind between a quota and the metric?
Kristen Anderson 25:40
I like to use KPIs or metrics because I think quota has a lot of negative baggage associated with the word. If you ask someone and say, do you support quotas of percentage women on boards? They'll say, no, maybe no, because the view is that I'm just doing this to tick the box, I'm going to go out on my small street in Parma here and say, ‘hey, this woman, come join my board’, and no senior level woman who's looking for a board position is advocating to have someone who's not qualified to be on a board. But again, if you believe gender diversity is actually a benefit for your company, and for the countries and for the EU, then you should work on it like a project and set goals. So, our target is 40%, right? It should be 50-50, but okay, 40%. So, then let's make progress, let’s find those women, let's go to European Women on Boards or other organisations and say, I'm searching and I'm going to be very transparent about board level search, and I'm going to find a woman or a person of colour, or a person of different ability. Diversity is good, but I might not have as many candidates as the white male, so, it's going to be a little bit more difficult, and I need to go and search in other places, and I need to make sure that I look for a diverse candidature of possible board members. I'm a STEM woman, and a lot of times, we say, ‘I can't find women in STEM’, but they're there, it's just, as an R&D leader, if you had an opening, you’d probably get 50 white male candidates, and you might have to look harder to get a male person of colour as a candidate. But I believe that they're there, and it just takes more time, but you have to believe in the objective of having more diversity on your board, set a KPI and track that you're making progress.
Nadia Nagamootoo 27:24
Totally understand that now, and how certain words can be loaded because of how we've used them in the past and how it can turn people off and actually reframing it into actually, this is important as a metric, because if we don't have anything that we're trying to measure, we're never going to get there. And so, how have you found the achievements of the women who have gone through your C suite programme, for example? Have they been sought after? Have they managed to get those big roles on boards?
Kristen Anderson 27:53
We hear feedback from the women that have gone through our programmes, and also the members who are women and men, that our programmes are beneficial for two things. One of which is the self-branding aspect, as people we're not so good at talking about our skills in a succinct way, sometimes we're undervaluing them, or maybe there's the imposter syndrome, or this board position says you need to have P&L experience and then you are like I haven't ran a country, well P&L experiences can be other things. And so, we provide experts that come in with help and support, and say, actually, with your CV and your experiences, this is how you could talk about yourself. We make women take videos speaking about themselves, all these kinds of things that are uncomfortable, because we have to practice that, we have to be succinct in how we talk about our skills. And a board-level CV is different, your LinkedIn profile if you're looking for a board position, is not your LinkedIn profile if you're looking for a senior executive position. So, we bring in experts who help women achieve their career aspirations, and then network with other women and men across Europe, this is because 80% of board positions are done via network. Actually, that also has to change because networking can be very much an affinity bias. If I have a board position, Nadia, and I know you and I have affinity bias for you or for something about you, then I offer it to you, it's not transparent. I'm bringing another woman on the board, so I'm not actually focusing on diversity, because you know we all have these biases. And so, more transparency in the posting of positions, and more focus on bringing in diverse candidates and evaluating them will also move us ahead in achieving the KPI of 40% women on boards.
Nadia Nagamootoo 29:31
Yeah. And you've touched on some of the key barriers that I am assuming you see a lot in women, in their ability to quite simply focus on what they're not so good at as opposed to what they are good at, and what they can't do as well as other people and always that benchmark. I hear it a lot in the work that I do. What do you think of the deeper systemic gender issues that lead to those commonalities between women and to that shared imposter syndrome or doubt in self, or lack of self-confidence, that feeling of wanting other people to spot their talent rather than stepping into it and saying, I can do this? Where does that come from?
Kristen Anderson 30:16
Well, I don't know if I'm exactly the qualified person to talk about the gender aspects of different cultures, because we know that it's starting at a young age. I mean, to your point, Nadia, all the research shows that when women have 85 to 90% of the skills for a more senior-level job, we will say we're not ready, when men have 40% of the skills, they'll say they're ready. Okay, that is not saying men aren't doing this well, and women are, there's no good and bad here, it's a gender difference and we have to be aware of it, and that we don't lean in so much. When you're at 15%, you think, ‘I don't know this, maybe I need to do some more work, I need to have a different role’. And a lot of times, partners or spouses or colleagues will say no, you should apply Nadia, you have the skills. So, we need to have that, we need to push ourselves, and at European Women on Boards, we try to also help with the confidence building, in letting them know that you're undervaluing your skills, and you're thinking that you aren't ready for this, but you are. The second thing is, I tell people if you're a manager and you're managing a man and a woman, and your male employee says, I'm ready for this promotion, and your female employee says, I'm not, you need to be aware of the gender difference. You need to try to evaluate without some biases, which is always very hard, because we don't always know our biases, and how they come into play. And there's the effect of what I call mirrortocracy instead of meritocracy. A lot of people say, ‘I don't believe in quotas, because I believe in meritocracy’, meaning, I just believe that we should promote or bring on boards, the most qualified people. And people say, ‘that's why I don't believe in this’, but let's be very clear, meritocracy is a wonderful theory, however, it is not reality, because that means we have no biases. If I can evaluate every single candidate without any biases coming into my evaluation, that’s meritocracy, but we're not robots, and we do have biases. So, there isn't such a thing as that, and we tend to have this affinity bias meritocracy, I want to bring Nadia on because she reminds me of myself, she’s younger than me, and I think she could do great on the board. I don't realise I have this bias, and so I'm not looking at Luca who is actually a more qualified candidate. So, I think that that's another piece that comes into play.
Nadia Nagamootoo 32:18
Oh, my goodness, I love what you've just said, there. I spent so long trying to bust the myth of meritocracy, and you've nailed it in a few seconds around how it just does not exist. And I love that concept, mirrortocracy, and that affinity bias, we're trying to mirror ourselves and what we think is the right person for the job.
Kristen Anderson 32:41
And as you said, Nadia, the challenging part is not the fact that we have biases, but that we don't know that we have these biases, and that’s why they're called unconscious biases. I don't know why I have an affinity bias to you; you don't look like me, your audience can’t see us, but you don't look like me, we don't have a similar background, but there's something in the conversation that we had, that in my mind triggered something that reminds me of myself. And in general, we like ourselves, so, I see parts of you in me, and that's why I want to put you ahead and help you, and that’s why I pay more attention to you, mentor you, and sponsor you in the organisation. And we very often don't know that we're doing it, that's why it's unconscious, and it's even more challenging.
Nadia Nagamootoo 33:22
Yes, thank you. And you’ve really spoken to some of the deeper systemic issues, because of course, if we have organisations where it's predominantly men in certain positions in the organisation, it's an organisation where power lies with that particular gender, then of course, there will be some underlying biases that you'd be like, ‘you know, you do remind me of me’. In fact, Lord Sugar, I don't know if you watch The Apprentice or whether you can get it in Parma, Italy, but Lord Alan Sugar in The Apprentice in the UK, he often says this, ‘you know what, there's something about you, you remind me of me. And so, I'm going to hang on to you for a little bit longer.’ And he's really overt about it, and each time I watch it, I'm like, ‘did you just say that? I don't think that's okay.’
Kristen Anderson 34:12
I know, it’s like, are you unconsciously saying or consciously saying that you’re biased because it's really interesting when you pay attention to the language. Let's say I'm on a board and I'm recruiting a new board member and I'm interviewing a candidate. So, this is not just the board, it could be an executive, it could be any role, and I say, ‘I think Nadia is a great fit for our board’. What do we think of that word? That is a bias word, because what's a fit? Are there some written criteria that says a fit? So, what I always tell organisations when I do a bit of this work on bias, is to ask the analytical questions, what makes Nadia a fit? What did you see in her when you interviewed her? Why is she a ‘fit’ to our board? Were there some examples that she provided? So, try to get to logic, in a soft way, because if I say to someone, ‘well, you’re biased, you like Nadia’, they're going to go, ‘I'm not biased’ because again, in our whole life these biases have been formed, it didn't form in one day. So, we defend them, and we don't want to be called biased, but you can challenge them in a soft way to get to some analytical thinking, instead of the Apprentice saying, instead of ‘you remind me of myself’, ‘what is it this person did that is so good?’ And challenge yourself in saying, ‘would I recommend Nadia, if Nadia was an Italian man? Or would I still be thinking the same way?’ So, you can also try to self-challenge or have a colleague challenge you, what do you think about Nadia? Someone who thinks differently than you, don't go to the person that's in your close circle, because they'll say, Nadia is great, just like I would say, Nadia is great, right?
Nadia Nagamootoo 35:33
Yeah. One of the things that we do is work on really being aware of, who are your go-to people? Who are in your inside circle that you always turn to? And of course, we have this issue now with social media and the people that we follow, and then the algorithms that then create this inflated perception that everyone agrees with us, because these algorithms, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, they're so sophisticated now. If I follow people that bake cupcakes because I'm interested in baking a cupcake for my daughter's party, then I'll just get streams and streams of loads of cupcakes and different people posting their cupcakes. And so of course, it's a similar thing when it comes to perspectives and views, if you follow or like people, or engage with people, you're going to get similar views back. So, it skews our perception, doesn't it, of different perspectives?
Kristen Anderson 36:27
Exactly, Nadia, and one of the ways you can try to be more inclusive and open up your circle, is to be analytical about it. ‘I think maybe I do surround myself with people that remind me of myself, and I don't know why’. But what I need to do is to do an inner circle exercise, where you can go through and write on a piece of paper, the people that I spend most of the time with at work that are similar to me; that have the same background as me, same gender as I am, same culture and language as me. And then the people that I last asked advice from, the colleague I asked advice from, the person I gave a project to, and even you could do it in your social life, who did I invite the last time I invited someone to my house? And it's an interesting exercise, not just ‘oh, maybe my inner circle is a little more homogeneous and like me’, it's also about saying, ‘well, I need to do something about that’. So, if I'm not getting enough perspectives that are different, I'm going to go reach out to a colleague who always disagrees with me at work and ask them their opinion, I'm going to have lunch with someone that is very different than me. And consciously, work on expanding your inner circle, because we don't become more inclusive just by saying, I want to become more inclusive, I mean, it's got to be awareness, and an interest to change. I worked with one CEO, and he did the inner circle exercise, and he said, ‘You know, I thought my inner circle was more diverse, because there are people with different backgrounds, but I realised that they'd been living in the same country as me for 25 years, so, they actually became more like me. So, they might have been different from me look-wise, originally from Korea, so I thought they were very different, but actually, they think very much like me, because they have maybe assimilated or taken on some of the same cultural elements that I have. So, I'm not getting enough people that are challenging me in my inner circle.’
Nadia Nagamootoo 38:02
I think it's a really eye-opening exercise, actually, and it brings it back to what we were talking about before in terms of metrics. If you're not measuring it, if you're not seeing it tangibly in a certain way, then you won't notice the system unless you tangibly make the system clear and obvious. So, in a similar way, we need to be doing that to ourselves and start noticing these things.
Kristen Anderson 38:25
Yeah, self-awareness is key to more inclusion and is also key to reducing biases. Yeah. And it's not self-flagellation, we're not to say, we're horrible, because we have biases, everyone does, but at the same time, we can't just say ‘it's fine, everyone has them’. That's the barrier to inclusion, it is these biases that we have and so, we need to be aware of them and actively work on them.
Nadia Nagamootoo 38:48
Yes. We're just coming towards the end of our conversation; it's gone really quickly. But I'd love to get your insight into, okay, the EU have given this board directive, right? What would you offer to organisations that are looking currently at their gender balance at senior levels and going, where do we start with this? How do we tackle this? What's the few things that they could do, that you could offer to start making progress?
Kristen Anderson 39:19
It's a good question and it's the right time to ask this question, not just because of the directive, but because it's again, back to the business case, diverse teams perform better, we need more diversity in all levels, and we focus on women at senior levels. I mean, I can say to companies, sponsor your woman to become a member of European Women on Boards, it’s not very expensive, they can have a network, and they can help develop themselves. Many companies don't have training for senior women, they have training for all women, but a lot of times senior women, they don't need the same training, they need a different type of training. So, we provide the training and the individual memberships. Also, corporations join us as sponsors, where they become a sponsor of EWOB and then they have certain packages where women can take our programmes or become members. Yeah. And we also do help companies in assessing their gender diversity, we have a gender diversity index that we publish every year, and we do help companies when they're starting in their journey, and they want to do more work to increase their gender diversity at senior levels. When they contact us, we have sessions where we talk with them, and we give them some advice and best practices. So, there's different ways. I'm not here to sell European Women on Boards, but it’s a way to connect your senior women. And again, it's not about having your senior women that go to boards, this is about also C level training, and just connecting senior women across Europe in different organisations and different functions, which then can help them be better senior leaders and give them skills to be successful at more decision-making positions in your organisation.
Nadia Nagamootoo 40:46
I’m absolutely flying the flag for the European Women on Boards. I love what you're doing, I think it's so needed, I love that you're bringing women together to talk and be overt about some of the barriers that they face and helping them, and challenging themselves to overcome those barriers, and knowing deep down that they can
Kristen Anderson 41:06
To your point, we're also looking for many more male allies to join European Women on Boards, because, again, the same type of webinars which we had last night, how do you get a C suite position relevant for men and women? We're not saying this is just a women's organisation, yes, our name says Women on Boards, but we had a lot of men joining our webinar yesterday, because of course, men want C suite positions as well, men are looking for board positions. So, we can't do this alone, this is not a women's group to further women or to complain about men, it's a group that believes that gender equality and decision making is good for countries and companies, and we look for men and women allies to join and work on this together.
Nadia Nagamootoo 41:43
Well, you've heard it here. So, anyone listening who's interested in learning more about the European Women on Boards, anyone who's interested, no matter your gender, and thinking about C suite or board level positions, Kristen, how can people find you? Where can they learn more about European Women on Boards?
Kristen Anderson 42:01
I will direct them to our website, which is easy europeanwomenonboards.eu, look there, because you'll see how to join as a member, you can see what our programmes are about, you can see t our gender diversity index and you can find a lot of information there. If anyone in the audience would like to have a further conversation, has questions, contact me, you'll see my email on the website, or you can go to my LinkedIn. So, just Kristen Anderson, put in Vice Chair of EWOB, and you'll see me and I’m happy to have people connect, and we can talk about it, and if they have questions or also feedback, suggestions, we're very open, we want to continue to grow to reach more gender equality, and to get your feedback on how to do that better.
Nadia Nagamootoo 42:37
Thank you so much, Kristen. The link to everything that Kristen and I spoke about today is going to be available in the usual place, the show notes page, avenirconsultingservices.com under podcasts. Kristen, it has been such a pleasure, I could talk to you for ages.
Kristen Anderson 42:54
It just went by so quickly, Nadia.
Nadia Nagamootoo 42:57
It's been fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing everything that you're doing and all those insights.
Kristen Anderson 43:02
Thank you very much for the invitation. It was a great pleasure, and hope to talk with you again soon.
Nadia Nagamootoo 43:07
That concludes Episode 23 of the Why Care Podcast. I could have spoken to Kristen all day. We covered a huge amount in that episode, from ERGs to executive sponsors overcoming backlash and bias, and of course, the brilliant work of European Women on Boards. Do let Kristen and I, know what you thought of today's show. You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter with the handle @NadiaNagamootoo. As always, I really appreciate your support of this podcast through leaving a review on whatever platform you're listening, and spreading the word by sharing it with friends and family. Huge thanks to Mauro Kenji, for editing this podcast, and Jon Rice for supporting with the show notes and getting it out there on social media.
