offer of full-time employment over other offers. He was impressed by the financial investment it had made in recruiting candidates of color, because it seemed to signal commitment to diversifying the top of the house. “My starting cohort was extremely diverse,” he says. “I took it as a positive sign that I could have a real career here.”
To Miguel’s dismay, however, the firm’s commitment to diversity began and ended with its recruitment effort. He and his cohort of minority recruits did spend a day at a “strategy college” that introduced them to various types of projects and the skills they would need to become good strategic managers. But over the course of the first year, he says, “our managers simply did not extend a hand to show us the ropes. They seemed to forget that they were once in our same shoes. I’m not saying we needed our hands held, but if a manager would have just shown us how to conduct a client interview, or run a program, that would have been very valuable.”
He adds, “If senior leaders were really invested in the future of this company as a diverse organization, you’d think they’d want to do their best to invest in Millennials of color.”
We find that a mere 6 percent of black, 9 percent of Hispanic, and 13 percent of Asian Millennials without financial privilege feel they’re experiencing rewarding relationships and intellectual growth and challenge at work, as compared to 25 percent of whites. These figures suggest that the diversification of leadership—a project nearly two decades in the making—is an outcome we will not realize anytime soon, despite the fact that as a generation, Millennials are the most diverse to date.31 The Center for Talent Innovation (CTI) research shows that employees of color are already less likely than their white counterparts to obtain sponsorship, the backing of senior leaders so critical to advancement into the highest echelons of management.32 An absence of crucial skill development and managerial training can only serve to compound minority talent’s invisibility to leaders looking to choose their successors. Given that, as mentioned in Chapter One, close to half of Millennials in the US identify with an ethnic or racial group other than non-Hispanic white, denying this cohort access to growth opportunities and sponsorship is tantamount to ensuring that leadership remains largely white.33
Bottom-Line Implications
Failing to capitalize on the inherent diversity of the Millennial generation isn’t just a failure for diversity-and-inclusion crusaders. Homogeneous leadership is something companies can ill afford—as a raft of CTI research shows—for two strategic reasons.
First, global growth depends on attracting top talent. And, increasingly, top talent will come from “non-majority” backgrounds. A glance at who has earned tertiary degrees country by country reveals a startling development: 90 percent of the world’s white-collar talent pool today is female and/or multicultural.34 As Miguel explains, this diverse talent tends to favor working for companies that demonstrate not only a commitment to workforce diversity, but also show that talent like themselves can rise to the top. A dearth of diverse role models dooms a global firm to the dregs of the talent pool.
The second reason has to do with innovative potential: our research shows that the firms that are best poised to unlock innovation—and profit from it—are those whose senior leadership is characterized by two-dimensional diversity—that is, leadership that has both inherent diversity (such as age, gender, race, or sexual orientation) and acquired diversity (such as cross-cultural fluency, generational savvy, tech literacy, language skills, or military experience). When leaders both embody difference and embrace it in others, it has a trickle-down effect on corporate culture: at companies where executives have both inherent and acquired diversity, team leaders are 74 percent more likely than leaders at companies lacking this diversity to unlock the innovative potential of team members by fostering a speak-up culture. This boost in innovation has a measureable impact, as such companies are significantly more likely to grow their shares in existing markets and crack open new ones.35
To avert the looming crisis in corporate leadership, companies need to see Millennials for the committed cohort they are, and invest in their skill development, innovative potential, and knowledge of other cultures. They also need to foment the relationships critical to their engagement and advancement. In the next two chapters, we’ll unpack just what this investment looks like.
4
Intellectual Growth and Challenge
Each year during his undergraduate studies at Brandeis University, Adonis Watkins interned at Lehman Brothers as an analyst, intent on a career in investment banking. With the financial meltdown of 2008, and the collapse of Lehman that same year, Watkins elected to take a detour around Wall Street, accepting an offer at a management consulting firm that advised global investment banks, asset managers, and hedge funds on their technological initiatives.
It seemed a good fit. Most of the personnel had PhDs; many of the senior consultants had been finance executives and portfolio managers. But there was limited investment made in junior talent because, as management explained to Watkins, “You’re not driving the revenue.” Nor were career growth prospects a given. “People came to work, did their jobs, and went home,” says Watkins. “There were no conversations about professional development or career growth opportunities.”
In 2012, hungry for development, Watkins accepted an offer to join Moody’s Analytics as an analyst. In little more than a year, he moved into a role supporting the sales team as an associate. Today, he’s a credit product specialist, managing his own sales region and targets—a goal he’d shared with management when he came on board but whose rapid attainment affirms for him he’s found the right company. “During the interview process I was asked about my short and long term career goals. I expressed my interest in pursuing a sales career and was told, ‘Perform well in this analyst role, work hard, and build your brand, and we’ll provide you with the opportunity to explore that interest,’” he says. “When my managers saw that I could take on a challenging role and perform well, they gave me the opportunity to pursue a sales career at Moody’s Analytics. This proved to me that the firm was serious about supporting my career interests and professional development.”
What excites him is the sheer range of learning opportunities that lie before him. “It’s fairly common, and encouraged, for employees to change roles and explore new challenges within the firm. I have lots of friends who’ve not only transferred to different departments but also different locations globally including our London, Dubai, and Australia offices.” Moody’s maintains an intranet site to enable people to apply directly to internal opportunities, and has a mentor program so that, if up-and-comers like Watkins voice their ambitions, senior leader mentors can advocate for, and open doors on behalf of, their mentees. Such relationships between senior leaders and protégés—what CTI defines as sponsorship—provide high-potential talent with the high-octane support and air cover necessary to stretch their boundaries. “I told my mentor that I was interested in going to Asia for an assignment to explore that market and continue my development as a sales professional,” Watkins recounts. “That same day, he reached out to the head of sales for the Asia-Pacific region to schedule a call with me to discuss how I could make that a reality. It’s a culture that fully supports growth and opportunity.”
An Unmet Hunger
Watkins’s story underscores just how keenly Millennials value opportunities to learn and grow on the job. Fully 73 percent of Millennials without financial privilege say that learning new professional skills is an aspect of intellectual growth that’s important to them in their careers. Yet only 55 percent say they have this aspect of intellectual growth in their careers.
Some of this hunger for skill building, our interviewees explain, stems from job insecurity: if you entered the job market after the crash of 2008, you are acutely aware you cannot afford to be perceived as having only one skill set or career path. “Sure, Millennials want flexibility around
