E-mail a friendDr. Sylvia Hewlett
airdate November 11, 2005
Economist Sylvia Hewlett is an expert on gender and workplace issues. She's founding President of the Center for Work-Life Policy, a nonprofit which develops policies that enhance work-life balance. The first woman to run the Economic Policy Council, she's also a best-selling author. She earned her Ph.D. in economics at London University and has taught at Cambridge, Columbia and Princeton. Hewlett co-authored a report in the Harvard Business Review on corporate underappreciation of minority executives.
Dr. Sylvia Hewlett
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome famed scholar and author, Dr. Cornel West, back to this program. The Princeton professor has teamed up with Carolyn Buck Luce of Ernst & Young and Dr. Sylvia Ann Hewlett of the Center for Work-Life Policy for a compelling new study called "Leadership in Your Midst: Tapping the Hidden Strengths of Minority Executives". Dr. West and Dr. Hewlett join us tonight from New York City. Dr. West, nice to have you back on the program, sir.
Dr. Cornel West: Always a blessing to be here, brother, and I'm so very blessed to be with my sister and co-author, Sylvia Ann Hewlett.
Tavis: And Dr. Hewlett, nice to have you on the program as well.
Dr. Sylvia Ann Hewlett: It's a great privilege, Tavis.
Tavis: Let me start this conversation, if I might, by putting up some stats. I believe that these numbers are so fascinating. They tell a really interesting story that I think would help us launch into a more meaningful dialog. Let me give you some numbers of what we're talking about when we talk about executive leadership being taken for granted in corporate America on the part of women and people of color.
Nineteen percent of professional women of color experience hidden biases severe enough to make them think about quitting. Nineteen percent. Thirty-four percent of African American women in the business sector believe that promotion at their companies is based on appearance rather than ability. Nearly a third of minority female executives worry that their speaking style labels them as lacking leadership potential. Twenty-three percent of minority female executives fear that colleagues perceive their animated hand gestures as inappropriate. Fifty-two percent of minority professionals do not trust their employers. Well, Dr. Hewlett, do the numbers tell the story here?
Hewlett: You know, I think they do. I think it shows that prejudice is really out there these days. It's a lot more subtle than it used to be, but its accumulated impact is really very serious both for the minority executives as individuals, but also for companies because obviously there's a big kind of disengagement and alienation that happens at work when this happens.
Tavis: So tell me why there is in fact this disconnect? It's one thing to run through these numbers. Tell me the back story here. Why does this disconnect exist in the first place?
Hewlett: Well, you know, I think it exists because everyone is expected to sh...horn themselves into the white male model. I mean, just think about it. In 2005, fully ninety-eight percent of CEOs in this country are white and male. We haven't changed that model at the top at all. So everyone else is kind of scrambling to try and fit in. But when you kind of shrink yourself down to something that's kind of acceptable at work, you're kind of denying your authenticity, denying a lot of the rich stuff in your life which you need to leave behind. And I think you also have this sense of not being acceptable, not being valued, not being appreciated. What we picked up, I think, as the most destructive reality was this enormous lack of trust.
Tavis: Dr. West, how does this white male model that Dr. Hewlett mentions now survive? How does a model like that work in the most multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-ethnic America ever? That seems a bit incongruent, does it not?
West: I think part of the question has to do with the quality of leadership. When you live in a bubble, then you don't recognize and agree to rid your rendering precious person invisible, to quote Ralph Waldo Ellison's great metaphor. We've got people of color and women of all colors whose value, whose significance, is rendered invisible and therefore you don't recognize that they are the very key to your future prosperity, let alone public civility at the workplace.
Tavis: Since you mention Ellison, as I recall, Ellison said that "I am invisible simply because you refuse to see me", so is this a malignant neglect? Are we deliberately trying not -- the white executives, that is -- trying not to see what is there or are there cataracts, for example, on their eyes and they just need a little surgery or something?
West: Well, you can't characterize all of them in one way. I think part of it has to do with their shortsightedness, their myopia on the one hand. On the other hand, again living in a bubble and not recognizing the different styles and different perspectives and different orientations of part and parcel of what will make not just one enterprise with the democratic experiment remain in place and afloat.
Tavis: Dr. Hewlett, I'm sorry. You wanted to say something?
Hewlett: Well, you know, one thing that is very powerful in this study, Tavis, is that as well as describing hidden bias these days, we also mapped what we call cultural capital. That is, the ways in which minority professionals disproportionately reach out into their communities as leaders and healers. For instance, you know, forty or fifty percent of these wonderful professionals are activist leaders in social outreach, at their churches, in their rescue squads.
We have amazing stories of altruism and give-back, but they don't show any of this stuff to their bosses or to their employers because they're afraid it will reinforce negative stereotypes. In other words, the existence of this ongoing hidden bias causes a kind of hiding away of some of the richness of leadership out there which could be transferable skills in the workplace.
Tavis: You just lost me there. Here's what I don't get. Why is it difficult, impossible, why is there this fear and trepidation on the part of people of color who are executives, women who are executives, to share their leadership beyond the workplace back at the workplace when white folks do it all the time? If I'm involved with the Philharmonic or the zoo or whatever, I mean --
Hewlett: (Laughter) There you go.
West: Absolutely. Well, part of the problem, though, Tavis, is that historically well-to-do white brothers who are members of the Episcopal Church and hang out at the country club were willing to talk about their private affairs. If you are a highly talented and sophisticated black woman or brown woman who may work in a homeless shelter or a girl scout troop in a homeless shelter -- we invoke that in the study, for example -- or a member of my own church, black Baptist Church, that might not have the same status as the Episcopal Church, so therefore you keep it to yourself because that may not help you in your upward mobility or next promotion.
Tavis: Here's what I don't get, Dr. Hewlett. I don't get this. If in the ninety percentile, the persons who run corporate America are still, with all due respect, white males and the majority of the American workforce we are told by the 2000 census in just a few years from now will be made up primarily of women and people of color, I don't see how this problem gets solved. Tell me something here.
Hewlett: Well, I think for starters we need to do a kind of 360-degree resume for individuals out there so there is a better chance of kind of showcasing or celebrating the full round of life. I also think that there is a real need for authentic, particularly mentoring, relationships which encourage possibilities. You know, one thing we do have in this study are all kinds of good examples of some new traction on the ground. I think both GE and Time Warner, to give some examples, are companies that are trying to break down the barriers so more stuff is shared.
You know, there was this great phrase, Cornel, fifteen years ago. It was called bleached-out professionalism. You know, this narrowing down of the self until you're only showing about eight percent of everything. So what we had in this study is they allowed evidence that's still going on, and we've also got some great examples of some beginning steps in terms of new ways of dealing with it.
Tavis: Before I get to those beginning steps, Dr. Hewlett, which I'll do in just two seconds here, one last question, Dr. West, about these stats I just offered. At fifty-two percent, we're talking the majority obviously of minority professionals who do not trust their employers. Now you and I, Dr. West, we're not going to put our personal business out there, but we have learned over the years in relationships the most difficult thing to traverse is that issue of trust. If you ain't got no trust in relationships, you ain't got much of nothing. Anybody in a relationship understands that. So if executives are not trusted by their minority executives, if white males who run corporate America are not trusted by their persons of color executives, that's a major problem.
West: It's a major problem generating levels of isolation, disengagement, alienation, which means that the company, let alone the society, cannot move forward. Now we've had wonderful discussions. Brother Ken Chenault of American Express. We were just with him last week. He's someone who is embracing, open and leading a way in a significant way. If we don't have more of that kind of leadership, Tavis, we're going to run into a dead end.
Tavis: I read your story, Dr. Hewlett. I saw Ken Chenault cited. I saw Dick Parsons cited. What occurs to me, with all due respect again, these two executives at American Express and Time Warner respectively happen to be executives who happen to be African American. Give me some examples where other folks are starting to get this.
Hewlett: Well, I mean, GE is actually a good case in point because Jack Welch was not seen as such a cutting edge person on some fronts. But I think the new team
The other thing I just wanted to mention, Tavis, is that we've got some global data in this study. We went into India and South Africa and the U.K. and what we found was that, in the global multi-national corporation framework out there in the international world, the same problem exists. Huge problems in terms of sharing your own life, particularly the leadership roles you play in the community, and an amazing lack of trust. What we found in India, for instance, it was serious enough that forty-four percent of the Asian executives were thinking about quitting because they felt so marginalized.
So, you know, this is a huge problem because guess what? In this day and age, something like eighty percent of the global talent pipeline is non-white male. So in a sense, we have to wake up and pay attention because this is the available talent and we need to, you know, learn how to celebrate this in good ways.
Tavis: Dr. West, before I offer you the exit question, let me share with our audience that the study -- I think I neglected to mention this earlier -- this study is found in the current issue of the Harvard Business Review if you want all the details about the study we're discussing as we speak.
Finally, doctors, before I let you go here, given, Dr. West, at this point, that ninety percent of the tablet these days are people of color in this pipeline, we talked to you about what executives can do, those who run corporate America, to take advantage of this study, to make better use of it and to change things. What do you say to those executives of color, those women of color, who have to, in the meantime and in between time, navigate this journey?
West: I remind them of W.E.B. Du Bois' great book of 1924, "The Gift of Black Folk" and here we're talking about the gift again, of people of color and women of all colors. That one of the great gifts is the way in which our talents sit at the very center of the future of the country and, for those black women and brown women and others, recognize that even though your talent may not be affirmed in a way in which they ought, do not give in, do not sell out, keep your integrity, preserve your sense of self and recognize that this wake-up call that we're putting forward is going to have effective consequences.
Tavis: "Leadership in Your Midst: Tapping the Hidden Strengths of Minority Executives" authored by Dr. Cornel West of Princeton, Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce. Dr. Hewlett, Dr. West, nice to have you on the program. Thanks for your work. We appreciate it.
West: Thank you so very much, my dear brother.
Hewlett: Thank you, Tavis. Great program.
Tavis: Glad to have you on this program.
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