and to persevere through difficulty. After 18 months, Jennifer was promoted alongside other males who had only been there six months. She became a leader of more engineers and was rated a top 5% leader in their annual Gallup poll. Nevertheless, she was rotated to another role under a senior leader with a reputation throughout the organization for bullying. Although several subordinates had reported his behavior over the years, HR never followed through and those who reported the bullying behavior seemed to disappear. Jennifer soon found herself on the receiving end of his angry remarks and demeaning comments, but she resolved to work through the adversity since she lacked confidence in how HR would respond.
During Jennifer's year-end review, her boss minimized her many accomplishments and denied her a raise. Although her mentor sympathized with Jennifer, she endured another frustrating year before being rotated into another department. She had lost two years of merits and bonuses. As she focused on creating industry-leading programs and projects that earned accolades from some, she had to constantly waste her time warding off highly competitive peers who used their political influence to gain power throughout the organization. Because she was an all-around top performer in virtually every role, she repeatedly encountered envious peers who used their political influence and savvy to take her off her trajectory. Little did she know she was a threat to their existence – apparently, there was only one job for both of them.
As Jennifer rose through the ranks, she was harassed, told to perform unethical tasks, baited, subjected to character assassination, reported to bad bosses, and suffered the insults of narcissistic peers. Much of her energy was spent warding off attacks, all while attempting to lead her teams and to create inspiring cultures in these hypercompetitive environments. Through it all, she remained focused on the endgame of being a good person and doing the right thing. Toward the end of her career, she was recognized with several awards for her impact in her industry and for her inspiring leadership. She was finally promoted to the C-suite after 25 years in the business and had reached the pinnacle of her career.
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These two stories are dramatically different and are representative of the dichotomy of today's experiences in the workplace. Mike had an instant bond with his manager over sports and shared interests that gave him an advantage whenever an imposter sought to undermine or bully him. By contrast, the barriers in Jennifer's workplace are clear. Although Mike's story hinted at the inequalities and bullying that happen in the workplace, Jennifer's experience drives home the urgency of our current situation. While selflessly building up her colleagues and working long hours to produce excellent results, she was surrounded by bullying, backstabbing, hypercompetitiveness, and verbal abuse. The leaders and HR managers who could have changed this situation were often primarily men who either didn't notice what was happening because they didn't experience the workplace the same as women or they just assumed that only the strong survive and women need to adapt. Mike was largely shielded from bullying and competitive peers through the relationship he built with a supportive boss. By the time he faced significant adversity, he was fortunate enough to have both the experience and support to work through it. Jennifer never had that benefit, and the same could be said for Amy and Margot in Mike's story.
While Mike and Jennifer each enjoyed a measure of success in their respective companies, both wasted valuable time and energy managing divisive relationships. Mike and his team lost two talented female employees who were bullied and mistreated, while Jennifer lost valuable productivity and personal restoration time due to bullying and inequalities. Unfortunately, hypercompetitiveness, bullying, and abuse are the norm in many workplaces. Just look at the #metoo movement: the proverbial hornets' nest has been whacked, finally revealing the most sinister side of the business world and many other segments of our society.
In order to maintain a competitive edge, remain profitable, and attract top-tier talent, companies today need to foster healthier right-balanced cultures, especially among their leadership and C-suite, where standout employees like Mike and Jennifer can thrive. Companies have the talent they need, but that talent is being minimized or squandered. In fact, if we teamed up Mike and Jennifer, they would be a high-performing team with Mike's outward competitiveness, risk taking, awareness of current trends, and drive to move the business forward, coupled with Jennifer's strong leadership of people, delivering results, and willingness to develop internal mechanisms to help others perform at their very best. The two of them highlight the potential of a right-balanced high-performing leadership team. In fact, let's consider how a high-performing team that is right-balanced could produce exceptional work at a company.
Consider the story of Kris and Allen, both assigned to the company's highest-priority project. Kris was a well-respected leader who inspired teams to perform at the highest levels of the organization. Allen was widely regarded by colleagues for his attention to detail and awareness of market trends. Over the years, Kris and Allen had forged a respectful, professional relationship and had a true appreciation for each other's talents. They expected the same respect to be shown within their team. In the beginning of the project, they established ground rules for the team to follow, rules that included respectful disagreement, focusing on the end goal, pursuing the best answer instead of being right, equal representation of ideas, and no interrupting. The team knew that Kris and Allen would model these behaviors and hold them accountable as well.
As they defined the project scope, it was clear that Kris was strategic, practical, and organized. Allen brought insights, facts, and competitive information. Their team designed an innovative product, but during execution meetings, team members, including Kris and Allen, were sometimes on completely different sides of an idea. However, they always worked together to help the team find the best solution. When they disagreed, they did so behind closed doors and talked out their differences, making decisions in the best interests of the company and the project. When other senior executives tried to hijack the project, Kris and Allen joined forces to support one another in reaching their shared goal. They were a true team.
The project finished on time, on budget, and was a huge success. The entire team was recognized for leveraging their technical and collaborative skills. They didn't look to defend a position, but instead, they looked for the best answer, the one that achieved their initial goal and got the project across the finish line. Members of their team showed up each day feeling motivated and inspired, and they carried vital insights of leadership and teamwork into their future projects.
It is also worth noting that this team survived, even thrived, all while operating in a larger work environment that was toxic. Unfortunately, today's workplace cultures are not changed by one project or two leaders at a time. The first step to changing a workplace culture is to eliminate the systemic barriers that prohibit a more integrated, high-performing workplace, so that every team, not just Kris and Allen's, can perform at their highest capacity.
Confronting Reality
Today's boards and executives, the ones ultimately responsible for setting the tone, environment, and culture within organizations, are undermining the success of their companies and the well-being of those they lead by overlooking barriers that high performers and women face in the workplace. They have allowed imposters to wreak havoc on employees under their authority, fostering unhealthy competition within their teams that creates internal combustion at the expense of their employees' mental health, relationships, and productivity.
This approach has created an unnecessary churn-and-burn mentality of “may the best man win at any cost” and allowed unethical and abusive behaviors among employees, which affects everyone but especially women, who are bullied at higher rates than their male colleagues.1 It has also promoted the wrong leaders to a company's most impactful and prestigious positions. For up-and-coming generations, the workplace is a shock to their very nature, ethics, and belief systems, especially younger women, who are technologically savvy, driven, educated, capable, and have high hopes and dreams for successful careers. This anti-bully generation is especially ill prepared for the surge of conflict and combative cultures
