Today's companies are in a war for talent, seeking to hire women and high performers who provide exponential performance impact in today's hypercompetitive global marketplace. Unfortunately, most executives and HR departments don't realize that many of the talented individuals who can maximize high performance in organizations – women, top performers, and inspiring leaders – are under siege in corporate America. The statistics for workplace bullying alone are staggering, with their direct or indirect impact extending to nearly 75% of the workplace. Turnover among female employees at some companies is as high as 27%, more than double the rate of 11% among men, even though record numbers of women are graduating from college and entering the workforce.1 To date, the solution offered to tormented and derailed high performers and women is little more than encouragement to stay in a corporate game that is often rigged by the design of toxic leaders who aim to eliminate or sabotage the high performers who threaten their turf. The result? Companies are failing the very employees they are responsible to lead, losing the war for talent, compromising their bottom line, and degrading their brands.
A majority of companies today have failed to identify the reason for this war for talent in their organization and are weaker because of it. The root cause? The unidentified war on talent is inhibiting companies who want to win the war for talent. There is a better way.
| War for Talent | Internal Challenge for Companies |
| Competing to recruit the top talent available. | Retaining top talent despite internal bullying, derailing by managers, and leadership that lacks accountability. |
| A shift to high performance seeks the right kind of talent and makes a company attractive to potential hires on the job market. | A shift to high performance helps retain top talent by empowering and promoting the best leaders and employees. |
If today's boards and C-suite leaders know that adding more women to the workplace, placing great leaders in key positions, and developing and promoting high performers are the three keys to designing a high-performance workplace, why are they allowing the undermining of these groups? After analyzing over 30 years of mentoring sessions with women and men, women in leadership programs that spanned the globe, and my own quest to become a high-performing leader, I found something both concerning and sobering: today's companies are not designed for high performance. In fact, they suppress and eliminate the true high performers and the most effective gender-balanced teams that have proved in multiple studies to inspire creativity, increase profits, and move companies to industry leadership. Today's bottom-up, groundswell strategy of adding more women and talent to the workplace is not working and has left many highly qualified women and men to find their own way through toxic and sometimes illegal barriers in the workplace.
It's time for a new approach that places the responsibility for creating gender-balanced, high-performing organizations squarely in the hands of the very individuals who are in positions of power and can make the change happen: the boards, executives, and leaders within organizations. We should no longer ask women, true leaders, and high performers to play a game they cannot win or be responsible for changing the rules of the game. Instead, they are the reason to change the game. The barriers they experience each and every day have reached staggering and epidemic proportions:
75% of women have reported abuse in the workplace, and 70% of those have been retaliated against. Women can be exceptional leaders, yet only 1 in 5 women holds a C-suite role.
High performers produce 200–500% more than an average employee, yet are targeted by imposter leaders almost 100% of the time, and are more likely than an average performer to leave organizations.
According to Gallup, great leadership is the number-one determinant of a company's success, but less than 25% of leaders today are considered great. How are companies developing the other 75% of their leaders?
Gallup also found that a staggering 35% of managers are actively engaged with their work. While 51% are simply not engaged with their work, an additional 14% are completely checked out, actively disengaged from their responsibilities.2
It's time to show boards, executives, women, and high performers how to create a high-performing workplace by recognizing the barriers, replacing them with more effectual attributes, and redesigning their workplace to create the potential for sustainable growth and industry leadership for years to come.
The good news: the boards and leaders of any company can use this step-by-step guide to attract and to retain top talent in the market, taking their innovation and profits to new heights. I'll show you the key that will unlock the high-performance potential of all employees so that companies can capitalize on new business opportunities and win their industry's war for talent.
Without a plan for high performance in place, these organizations will fail to reach new heights or to maximize their talent. Perhaps companies fail to achieve high performance because (1) they refuse to make the necessary changes or (2) they simply don't know how to effectively integrate high performers and women into their teams and to remove the barriers they face. My bet is on option two.
In fact, most CEOs and C-suite leaders strive to cultivate a high-performing organization, but they are mired in antiquated methods and infrastructures that prohibit them from reaching their own full potential. Organizations are hindered by individuals who are willing to undermine colleagues for the sake of advancing their own careers. Unfortunately, these self-serving individuals are good at playing the game, using a company's culture to their own advantage, at the expense of high performers and shareholders. Today's HR typically chalks these up as “personality conflicts,” never truly addressing the underlying and pervasive issue.
How do talented, high-performing individuals flourish and make an impact in this kind of workplace?
In order for highly talented women and men to succeed, companies must make a shift toward a high-performance system, making it possible for the right individuals to flourish and enabling teams to function at peak capacity. The power, influence, and responsibility for making this shift rests squarely on the board and current executive leaders. Here is the hard truth that competitive companies of the future need to face:
It's time for leaders to stop expecting change to come from the bottom of the organization.
Today's workplace is not designed for high performers to succeed, even if HR successfully recruits a talented and diverse workforce. Individuals who are primarily driven to achieve a title, rather than to produce excellent work, can navigate their way to management or leadership positions (let's call them imposters) by bullying their peers and blocking high performers, especially women, from advancing or achieving success. Imposters are primarily driven by their own personal and professional achievements, resorting to aggressive bullying tactics to defend their turf. Today's true high performers (those who are highly ethical and have integrity, intellect, drive, and great leadership traits while also competing externally) make it because of sheer grit and determination. Most of them do not.
If the imposters are the ones making it to the top and are not the true high performers, then workplaces today are not maximizing the potential of the true top performers and women today in leadership positions. What would it take for a company to make this shift to a culture and infrastructure system that allows high performers to succeed and for gender